


stop making sense

by Anonymous



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - High School, M/M, Pretentious Teenagers, Slow Burn, debate, inceptionkink, it gets to the kissing though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-12-02 02:20:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20968706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: When they were both freshmen, Eames made him quit debate twice. Arthur has never told anyone in the world that.A love letter to high school debate in the late 2000s.





	stop making sense

**Author's Note:**

> I stumbled across this ancient doc on my computer the other day and I figured I should throw it up here, if only for archival purposes. It is unfinished and certain to remain that way. It's also _wildly_ out of date, as far as high school debate norms go--it was written in like 2010 for inceptionkink and I haven't seen a high school debate since. 
> 
> But, consider this my love letter to late-2000s national circuit LD debate.

When they were both freshmen, Eames made him quit debate twice. Arthur has never told anyone in the world that. 

\---

See, here's the thing. Among the best debaters, the very best -- the men and women who win tournaments and qual for the national tournament five times over, who get offered coaching jobs before they even graduate from high school -- there are two general types. Arthur is of the most common breed, the type that wins because they work harder than anyone else, because they are smart enough to ace real high school and still cut thirty cards a night, because they do speaking drills every single day, and because they have answers to absolutely everything. 

Eames, though. Eames is the second type, the con man, who slips and slides and is totally unpredictable. Eames comes up with things that not even the first kids thought of, he smiles wide and makes the whole room laugh, he makes everyone look at him and think he is the winner. Eames has fucking swagger, and he had it in some small quantity even when he was fourteen, spotty, and wearing ill-fitting khakis. 

They hit in the first prelim of Arthur's very first tournament. Eames had grinned at him and talked too much and Arthur had clenched his teeth in an effort to avoid being rude. The judge was taking forever to explain his decision to the last pair and all Arthur wanted in the world was for Eames to shut the fuck up and let him look over his case one last time. 

But Eames was midway through what appeared to be an infinite list of his favorite things about New York City now that he lived there, you know, and just wasn't seeing it in movies and shit. 

Arthur began to ignore him obviously at around item thirteen.

"Are you even listening to me?" Eames said, sounding bemused and not in the least off-put. 

"Not at all."

"Fair enough." He paused. "What's the exact wording of the topic again? I can never get the preposition down."

Arthur smiled and told him and thought, very distinctly, that he wanted to make this boy cry. The reverse very nearly happened. 

Neither of them was any good yet, not really, but Arthur was far too rigid. He had never thought that democracy could be defined by exclusion --- he had sort of mentally translated that part of the topic to "good government," with due process and rights and shit. For several moments after the round, some childish part of him squirmed and insisted it wasn't fair. That he hadn't thought of that and it was stupid to spend his weekends on something so goddamn irritating. 

But then Eames smirked at him, clapped him on the shoulder, and said, "Tough luck, mate, but you are going to need to have more imagination than that."

Arthur knew he couldn't quit, because next time, he had to kick Eames' ass. Next time, there would be no argument that Arthur hadn't already thought of. 

\- - - 

Next time, Arthur punched the wall in the men's bathroom, broke his hand, and didn't so much quit as was forced off the team for ten minutes while his coach screamed at him. It was not his best day. 

(The look on Eames' face when Arthur took out his two pages of blocked out responses to his completely new, unread argument about felons made all the pain worth it, though, when Arthur finally managed to beat that asshole).

Arthur was quite content to loathe Eames forever. Unfortunately, Eames was not actually a terrible person. He was full of himself, smart-mouthed, and a bit of an asshole, but what debater wasn't? Debate attracted kids who liked to argue, who thought they were hot shit, kids who judged themselves on their intelligence and told _then_ them that the smartest kid got the trophy. Debate taught highschoolers to beat each other up with their minds -- everyone was an asshole. 

But Eames was funny and sometime in their sophomore year, Eames decided that he was Arthur's new best friend. Arthur didn't have any say in this, but Eames was not easy to ignore. 

Arthur kicked him in the shin, hard and didn't look up to see Eames' reaction. 

He was trying to pay attention to the rebuttal, for Christ's sake. 

There were, perhaps, thirty seconds of blessed peace, the room filled with the rustling sounds of people writing down the debater's arguments underneath the rapid fire cadence of him saying them, until Eames pushed a scrap of yellow card stock on to Arthur's desk. 

He didn't look at it until the speech was over, but when the timer beeped, he glanced down and manfully tried to repress a snort of laughter. 

It was an unflattering, if accurate, portrait of the debater, done in the brilliant red of the pens that Eames preferred. And honestly, his nose wasn't that big, but it still -- it was funny. 

When Arthur looked up, then, people were scowling at him, but Eames was beaming. 

Eames leaned over, and whispered into Arthur's ear, his breath hot and tickling. 

“Honestly, I have want Iran to get the bomb so I never have to have hear that argument again.”

Arthur hit him again, tried not to let his hand linger. “You are a terrible person.” 

Eames smirked and rubbed at his shoulder. “I always go home with bruises – you're going to get my coach in trouble, make my mum thinks he beats me.”

“He probably should.” 

“Do you _mind_?” said a snotty looking junior, her face twisted up into what was pretty clearly disdain for the younger kids who were disrupting the uneasy quiet of preptime. 

Arthur sat back in his seat, saying, “sorry, sorry,” and tried to ignore the face Eames made at her back and the deft movements of his pen that had her join the debater in the doodle, an unfortunate horsy cast to her features.

The cafeteria was filled to the brim with highscholers dressed in suits. Most of them were in ill-fitting hand-me-downs or ugly sweatervests. The ones that tried to dress classy missed the mark and ended up looking like gangsters, metallic ties and black suits, black shirts. All the girls had high heels that looked like they pinched. There were a smattering of coaches – the college students in hoodies, smelling like tobacco and hangovers, the head coaches in comfortable shoes and looking for the judge's lounge. Some guy, because there was always one, was playing a guitar. 

Arthur wasn't quite at the top of the heap, yet – he was only a junior, he has won some things, but nothing awe-inspiring, but at least he knew how to dress. He had his carefully selected three piece that looked like it cost far more than its Goodwill price tag and a very nice silk tie he had gotten for Christmas. He looked better than just about anyone in the room – debaters always looked sort of terrible, sleep deprived amd mussed. 

Eames, though – Eames took awful to a whole new level. He was currently dressed in a maroon and yellow paisley shirt, his collar open and his tie crumpled in his hands. His jacket had fallen off the back of his chair and his feet were on the table, covered in truly horrendous powder blue shoes. 

At least it made him easy to find, Arthur reflected. 

“You look disgusting,” Arthur said, interrupting Eames mid-story. Eames nearly fell out of his chair, twisting around to look at him. The group of people he had been talking to looked a little irritated to be interrupted, but Eames's smile softened into something real when he looked up at Arthur. 

Arthur frowned at him harder. 

“You are so mean to me,” Eames said. “I simply don't understand why I tolerate you.” 

“Nobody should be nice to you while you are wearing those clothes, you need a deterrent,” Arthur said, easily. 

Eames's hands immediately went to his buttons. 

“I will shoot you in the face, you know – we are in Texas, the waiting period for guns is like twenty minutes and I can always throw your body in the bayou,” Arthur said. 

“Ahh, that's why – your death threats are always so _specific_. It is an admirable quality in a man,” Eames said. He undid the top botton of his shirt, likely out of sheer countrariness, but then his hands fell away. Arthur's blood pressure thanked him. 

“So, I heard that you hit Robert last round,” Arthur said, trying to make his tone sound businesslike. 

Eames nodded, already shifting through his files. “That I did.” 

“Can I see the flow?” Arthur said, but Eames already had it out and was handing it to him. 

“Will it win me your favor?” Eames asked. 

Arthur snorted and didn't bother answering – he was already looking at the written outline of the round, pursing his lips as he noted arguments and looked for anything he wasn't ready for. There was a little doodle of Cobb at the bottom right corner, squinting feriociosuly – he had been the judge. 

Eames was always drawing. It was an atypical habit for a debater, most of them clustered around the humanities and social sciences in their area of talents, a rare few considering themselves writers or actors. It wasn't as rare as the couple who wanted to be scientists, but still, it was unusual. Arthur liked his drawings, even though he never told him so. 

“Thanks,” Arthur said. 

“Sit down, stay a while – your round doesn't start for a while,” Eames said, patting the chair next to him. 

“Can't,” Arthur said. “Some of us actually do work.”

Eames rolled his eyes. “Some of us occasionally stop in order to socialize with other human beings.”

Arthur set the flow back down. 

“Thanks for the--”

“No problem,” Eames said. “Good luck.” 

“You too,” Arthur said, and turned to go back to the table where he had left his stuff. 

He heard someone ask Eames why he liked that asshole, and Eames laughing response. 

“Fucked if I know, but I do.” 

Arthur smiled, despite himself, and decided he liked Eames, that asshole, right back.

At his table, Ariadne was holding court among the other novices. She was only a freshman, but she was going to be good – she had taken to debate like a fish to water and Arthur was frankly glad that they would never have to debate. 

Most of the other novices were terrified of him, as was only right and proper, but Ariadne beamed at him as he approached. 

“Arthur! You are right on time to do some educating. We have a question.” 

Arthur unbuttoned his jacket and sat down, making a quick note of Robert's case so that he would remember it. “Shoot.” 

“Okay, so, what does GDS stand for?” 

He hated her so much. She smiled widely at him and he was certain that she knew exactly what it meant, that she was a hell-beast sent here to torment him. 

“Don't you have any questions about, you know, _arguments_?” he asked, a little desperately. “I can help with that.”

“Sure, but, GDS. We want to know,” Ariadne said.

“It stands for Good Debater Syndrome. It's when someone likes a debater simply because they are good and successful,” Arthur said. 

“Ohhh,” Ariadne said, knowingly. “Like you and Eames! Or, does it not apply when they are both good?”

Arthur groaned and tried to ignore her.

“Although I guess it is not the best example of the phenomenon – I bet he'd love you even if you were terrible.”

“He does not _love me_, don't be ridiculous.”

“Ahh, so it's just lust, then. That's cool – but admit it, you like him at least a little bit.”

“Have you _seen_ what he is wearing? No. No, I do not.”

Ariadne smirked at him. “Trying to move slowly? Arthur, don't be afraid to commit your heart! All you need is love!”

“Someone needs to take away your Moulin Rouge DVD,” Arthur said, getting out his case and trying to look busy. He crossed out a word that would link him to Robert's kritik and replaced it with a more innocuous term, wondering if he should respond by going further to the left or sticking to his guns. 

“I don't know what you are referring to,” Ariadne said primly. “But seriously, it's adorable. I think he wants to buy you flowers and chocolates and adopt Cambodian babies with you.”

“Something is seriously wrong with you,” Arthur said. “I went seriously wrong in your instruction.”

“You couldn't possibly make a mistake,” a new voice said and Arthur looked up to see Eames smiling at him. Ariadne looked gleeful and the bottom fell out of Arthur's stomach. 

Eames sat down in the seat next to Ariadne and she whispered something to the novice next to her, both of them giggling. 

Eames shifted his grin to her. “Are you not treating Arthur with the respect that is his due? Shameful, Ariadne. Simply awful.”

“Just trying to keep him honest,” she replied easily. “What brings you over here?”

“Got bored,” he said. “Figured I'd get a leg up the competition by distracting Arthur here – he shouldn't get to use his better work ethic to his advantage.”

“Do you _ever_ work?” Arthur asked, frustrated.

“Not so you'd notice,” Eames said, but he was lying. Eames was a brilliant improviser, but he worked just about as hard as the rest of them. It didn't make it any easier to tolerate him, however. 

“I have to leave for my round, soon,” Arthur said. 

“Yeah, I know, me too – I just --” Eames looked cautious, suddenly, glancing quickly at Ariadne. 

She immediately stood up and hauled her hanger-ons with her. “I am going to get some water,” she announced. 

That girl was far too swift on the uptake. 

“I'll go with--” Arthur began, a bit desperately. 

“No worries, I'll get you a bottle,” she said, and was gone. 

Eames was still just looking at him, his handsome face a little troubled. He was biting his lower lip and Arthur did his best not to stare at the indent that his teeth made, the way his lips got pinker from the irritation. 

“You just?” Arthur prompted, despite his misgivings. 

There were several breaths of silence. 

“I'm not so sure about the adoption,” Eames said, finally. “But how does coffee sound?”

Arthur felt his cheeks immediately heat up. He looked down at his papers, sorting them unnecessarily and trying to find something to say. 

“Uh. I try not to drink caffeine?” he said, wincing at the questioning intonation of his voice. 

“Well, a movie, then,” Eames said. 

Arthur sighed. “Eames, I have to go to my round.”

Eames glanced away. “Yeah, okay. Me too, I guess.” 

Arthur gathered his papers faster than he had ever done so before, stood up, and all but fled. He left Eames sitting at the table, looking a little melancholy and more serious than Arthur had ever seen him. 

\- - -

Arthur was distracted during his round. This was _unacceptable_.

Robert was a good debater, if a bit out of his depth, and Arthur really couldn't slack off and still win this round. But his eyes kept on drifting to his cell-phone, currently being used as a timer on the side of his desk. He wondered if Eames would text him. 

Eames didn't, but he was debating too. Maybe it was going a little better for him. 

At least there were no surprises – Robert ran the case that Arthur was expecting, some half understood nonsense largely copy and pasted out of some Baudrillard back-file. Arthur only understood every third word, but that's okay – it did not seem like Robert's comprehension was any better. 

The judge was looking a little pained. Arthur did not blame him – this was shaping up to be a pretty terrible round. 

But Arthur pulled through, managed to make a sufficient number of intelligible arguments, and came out with the victory. That was something, at least. His speaker points were likely not very good, but he hasn't lost a ballot yet and he was certain to break into the single elimination rounds. 

While the judge was explaining his reason for decision, Arthur couldn't help but play with his phone, trying to figure out if had the balls to text Eames and say yes to the movie. Hell – he wondered if he had the balls to even say no. 

But he didn't, and as lied and congratulated Robert on a good round, he wasn't even sure _why_. It was frustrating as all hell. Eames was always so fucking frustrating.

Eames avoided him for the rest of the day. Arthur tried not to resent him for it, but his absence put him off-balance, made him cranky. Ariadne tried to press him for details after he got back from his round, but he snapped at her and managed to put her off. She even failed to get him his water, that nosy bitch. 

That wasn't fair, but Arthur couldn't help it at the moment. He was in a foul mood. 

He was sitting in a corner of the cafeteria, having managed to chase everyone else away from the plug with truly epic amounts of bad grace – plugs being, of course, hot commodities with everyone having laptops and a lot of work to do. 

Arthur tried to do research, tried to do something productive, but he found himself continually looking out over the crowd of people, trying to spot of flash of powder blue shoes. 

He won't admit to it, but that's the reason why he didn't notice Cobb walk up. 

“I heard you sucked in your last round,” Cobb said, but his face was concerned. 

“Fuck off,” Arthur replied, not bothering to restrain the snarl in his voice. 

Cobb ignored him and squinted thoughtfully, taking on the annoying guise of a man about to stick his nose into something that didn't concern him. Cobb had no rational sense of self-protection and so he sat down next to Arthur, leaned over and looked at what he was working on.

“Finally finishing that affirmative?” Cobb said. 

“Your edits are moronic. I'm ignoring the vast majority.” 

Cobb shrugged. “Well, you are the one who is going to have to read it.”

Cobb was a good coach, but he was annoyingly adept at ignoring Arthur's irritation with him. That isn't to say that Cobb was emotionally stable – he was just self-centered enough that none of Arthur's vituperation could draw him out of that very round, very dense skull.

Arthur sighed. But Cobb wasn't dumb, not actually, and he was kind of a good coach. Also: even Arthur could recognize when he was being an asshole. 

“I like your rewording of the criterion,” he said, grudgingly. 

“So, who pissed in your cornflakes?” Cobb said. Arthur winced. 

“Please don't attempt slang, it makes you seem older than you already are.”

“Hey!” Cobb said. This was a genuine sore spot. “I'm only like four years older than you.”

“Okay, daddy-o. You are down with what's happening.”

“Don't mock me, I'm your dear leader. But seriously, Arthur, I think you almost made Ariadne cry,” Cobb said. And that was his responsible adult voice, goddamnit it. 

“I desperately and completely don't want to talk about it. Your job is not to sort out my personal life.”

“I hear Eames was hanging out with you guys before the round,” Cobb said, trying to sound casual. 

Arthur shut his laptop with a bang. “Cobb, for fuck's sake.”

And apparently, even though the world was a cold and heartless place, there was some small goodness in the universe. Before Cobb could open his mouth, the pairings for the next round were released, and the cafeteria swarmed with highschoolers attempting to see who they were debating for thirty seconds longer than everyone else. Normally the mob was too much to bother with, but now Arthur leaped up, stuffed his laptop in his bag, and jumped in willingly. 

“Gotta go, need to debate!” he said, elbowing a speech person when they tried to go around him. 

Not even this was worse than suffering through Cobb attempting to talk about feelings. Not that, of course, there were any feelings to talk about.

Arthur hated staying at the tournament hotel. There were always too many people he knew wandering around, too many people trying to listen to his conversations and determine his arguments. It made him paranoid, and Ariadne already gave him enough shit about thinking he was a spy or something. 

And, to make things worse, Eames was staying there. 

Cobb had ordered Indian food for dinner and Arthur's room stank of curry. Also: there was no wireless in the actual rooms, which was a fucking travesty. So it was now thirty minutes past midnight and he was sitting in the lobby, having pulled one of the deceptively uncomfortable chairs over to an outlet, trying to get some work done. He was largely failing. 

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck,” he muttered, jiggling the power cord to his laptop and praying that it wasn't finally giving up the ghost. 

“Having problems?” 

Arthur was not too proud to say that he nearly fell off the chair. Eames was standing above him, smiling easily and stinking of tobacco. He had changed out of his dress shirt, but kept the trousers. The thin white undershirt he was wearing didn't hid the black smudge just above his heart and Arthur frowned. 

“You have _tattoos_?” he said, without even thinking about it. 

Eames actually flushed. “One.”

“Oh,” Arthur said, trying to resist the temptation to ask. Eames would usually just volunteer the information, deluge him in complements, sarcasm, nonsense – conversation was never _stilted_ when he was involved. 

It was now, though -- Eames's hands in his pockets as if he didn't know what to do with them, his eyes a bit strained around the edges. Eames looked like he was studying him, his lips slipping out of a smile and pursed in the way they did when he was thinking. Arthur bit his lip and looked down, not even able to feel happy at his computer finally accepting a charge. 

“Wanna see it?” Eames's voice said, suddenly cheery and easy and so normal it hurt a little bit. When Arthur looked at him, his smile had the tinge of a decision. 

“Why do you insist on stripping in front of me?” Arthur said, without even thinking. Eames just leered, though, back to the easy (meaningless) flirting that characterized their reaction.

“I keep hoping for a tip. I got bills to pay.” Eames sat down at his feet, leaning against the wall. “Heard you did well today.”

Arthur shrugged. He didn't bother with modesty. “Yeah. Had an easy draw, didn't debate anyone that good.” 

“That's why I'm doing my duty and distracting you.” Eames craned his neck up, making a half-hearted effort to look at Arthur's computer. Arthur scowled at him.

“Sometimes I feel that you are legitimately doing the work of some shadowy cabal who pays you to annoy me.” 

“That, my dear, is arrogant-- even for you.”

“Well,” Arthur said. “It is my best theory for why you insist on harassing me all the time.”

“I like the way you scowl,” Eames said. “Although I will admit, Yusuf did give me a snickers bar at Greenhill when I made you laugh like an idiot in front of the judges. That was more in congratulations than strictly payment, you understand.”

Arthur hit him on the shoulder. Eames laughed and got out his own laptop, plugging it in. Arthur looked down at him for a long moment, but he appeared to be actually opening up word documents, frowning a little bit at prewritten blocks. Eames hit his leg without actually looking up from his computer. 

“Don't look so surprised.” 

Arthur smiled down at his own laptop and started joined Eames in work. 

It was easy, to work like this, the only sounds Eames's breathing and the tapping of their keys. The hotel lobby was peaceful at this time of night, the tired man working the front desk the sole other human being in sight. Arthur felt a burst of confused resentment toward Eames and his ridiculous offer earlier in the day, hatred toward the risk that everything could collapse and go wrong. Arthur liked when they were laughing and joking and being assholes to each other – but he liked these moments, too. Quiet. More peaceful than most people would guess Eames would even be capable of. 

They worked there until Cobb showed up, yelling at them that they need to sleep and forcing Arthur back up to the room. Cobb all but dragged them by the ear and threatened to call Eames's coach. They laughed at him, called him dad, but went up stairs and went to bed. 

\- - - 

The next morning came too quickly and Arthur barely noticed getting dressed, getting coffee, and showing up in his first round of the day. The rest of the rounds slipped by in a similar haze, people speaking like auctioneers and spinning pens and wearing ill-fitting suits and making the same fucking arguments everyone else was. Someone won the tournament, it wasn't either Arthur or Eames, and then they all went home. 

\- - -

One of the many, many, _many_ weird things about debate is how little time they all spend together. There were only a couple tournaments a month, and even though there is a core group of national circuit kids who go to most of them, the vast majority of them don't. It seemed like like time dilates at debate tournaments, that people step off the bus and go into another dimension, with a different dominant species than typical high school. It felt more real, almost – as if this was Arthur's real life and his real friends, and the hours he spent every day highlighting cards in English class or simply staring out the window in math are an inconsequential dream. 

At the same time, though, sometimes it felt like an eternity until the next debate tournament, until he goes back to another high school cafeteria and sees his _true_ friends and teachers. He walked around the halls of his high school, looked at the people around him, and felt a hint of that teenage alienation that everyone has told him he is supposed to feel. 

To make things worse, the last tournament was the last of the year and he won't see anyone until camp. 

_i am so bored_

Not that, of course, Eames limited his presence to the physical. His phone vibrated against his hip again and he resisted the urge to scowl at it. 

_entertain me luv_

Arthur leaned back in his chair, trying to be subtle. Mrs. Lorning was turned toward the board anyway – she probably wouldn't notice. 

_In class. Shut up._

The reply was almost instantaneous. 

_if ur gonna use punctuation u shud kno those r sentence fragments_

He bit his lip, trying not to smile. The teacher turned around and said something about what was going to be on the final. Arthur wrote down a few nonsense words, not really caring at all. His phone vibrated again, hidden in his hand underneath the desk.

_aww, baby. dont b that way. ur periods r v sexy _

Seconds later. 

_not that i am implying u have a vag_

Arthur clenched his fist, fingernails digging into his palm, in an effort not to laugh. The teacher, who was looking at him, raised her eyebrow. He smiled vaguely back and tried to look diligent. She watched him for the rest of the period and he couldn't read his text messages, but he kept his phone in hand, the regular vibration of his cell phone almost enough to make him smile. 

The moment the bell rang, he rushed to the bathroom and sat in a stall. He had missed several more text messages from Eames, riffing on the same theme (_or tht i find blood sexy_ and then _but i culd lrn if ur into that_ and then _r u 2 busy reporting me 4 sexual harassment to reply_ and then _arthuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuur_). 

_Why did I give you my number?_ he texted. The bell rang, indicating their next class was about to start. It was debate, though, and Cobb didn't give a shit if he was late. 

_bc u luv me_ and then _or araidne gave it to me 1 of the 2_

_I'm telling her you can't spell her name._

_i cn spll urs_

_Arthur only has one u in it._

There was a long pause after that one before, finally: _i am overloaded with dirty punchlins cant cope send help_

Arthur found himself blushing and laughing in a stall in the mens restroom while being late for class three days before finals. Eames was a terrible, terrible influence and a terrible human being. He told him so, but all he received in return was a cheerful looking smiley, with a capital D for the grin.

They kept texting. And texting. And _texting_. Replying to Eames's inanity started to become punctuation to Arthur's life – when someone said something stupid, he would tell Eames. If dinner was good, he would tell Eames. If Congress did something supremely ridiculous – well, in that case, Eames would probably tell him. He treated US politics with a fierce devotion, even if it was more like the way most people get hooked to shameful reality television than actual civic engagement. 

Regardless, it felt like Eames lived a lot closer than he actually did, almost like he was riding around in Arthur's pocket – an observation, by the way, that he never shared.

They never called each other, though, and it never bothered Arthur – until he was woken up at three AM by a phone call, three weeks after finals. 

Arthur was bleary and half-awake, but Eames's name and grinning face on his phone startled him to full consciousness. 

“If you are not dying I am going to be pissed,” Arthur said, without preamble. 

“_Hi,_” Eames crooned, tinny from across the phone. “I am not dying and I don't think you're pissed. _I'm_ pissed.”

“Oh god,” Arthur said, leaning back into his pillows. The shot of adrenaline from his irrational worry faded and he sunk lower. “Are you seriously drunk dialing me right now?”

Eames made a vague noise of confirmation. 

“Well?” Arthur said. “Why did you call?”

He was still vaguely annoyed, but he was tired enough that he couldn't be bothered to be too much of an asshole. Also, Eames sounded soft and tired and familiar. 

“I missed your voice,” Eames said. Arthur heard the hiss of a lighter and Eames taking a long drag of a cigarette. 

“You shouldn't do that,” he said, immediately. “It's bad for your throat.” 

Eames sighed happily. “I _missed_ you scolding me. Keep talking.” 

Arthur wasn't really sure what to say – he wasn't really sure what to do. Part of him just wanted to hang up and go back to sleep, but he couldn't bring himself to do that to Eames. Perhaps he got sentimental when sleepy. 

“What do you want me to say?” Arthur said. “I could mock you for drinking and smoking and getting tattoos and being a juvenile delinquent, but then you'd just laugh at me.”

“Arthur,” Eames said, insistent. “_Arthur_.”

“For fuck's--” he began, but Eames kept talking. 

“Arthur, you don't want me to answer that question. You don't want me to tell you what I want.” Eames said, his voice certain and oddly authoritative. He sounded sad, though, oddly resigned. Arthur stiffened at the tone, feeling excruciatingly awkward all of the sudden. He felt the urge to deny it, for some wild reason, even though he was fairly sure Eames was right. 

“Eames,” Arthur said, beginning to feel a headache coming on, which wasn't fair at this time in the morning. 

“Shh,” Eames said. “I've changed my mind. Just breathe at me.” 

Arthur let his mouth close, completely uncertain what to do with this situation. He was a good kid who had never smoked a cigarette, had only tried pot a few times and didn't like it, and who had only gotten drunk once. He had a girlfriend sophomore year, but didn't have one now, and he didn't know what to do with himself but breathe. He could hear Eames on the other end of the phone, even though he wasn't saying anything, and could almost imagine the curl of his breath against his cheek, as if he were here in person. 

“It's a lopsided, shitty rose,” Eames said, suddenly, a bit desperately, too rapidly. This was the first time in the conversation where Arthur heard the faint slur in his words. “Nothing fucking meaningful or beautiful or badass – just a fucking ugly rose that one of my mates did when we were both drunk and he was showing off and celebrating his new job at the parlor.”

“Eames--”

“My mum wanted to throw me out of the house or something, she was so mad.”

“Eames--”

“I thought you might want to know, because you seemed curious and you keep bringing it up.”

“Eames!” Arthur said, perhaps a bit too loudly. Eames finally stopped talking and Arthur wished he could see his face. “Maybe you should go to bed?” 

He could hear a sigh. “Probably. Goodnight, Arthur. See you at camp.” 

“Goodnight,” Arthur replied. 

Arthur didn't hang up the phone for several moments afterward, but it seemed, neither did Eames. They listened to each other's breath for a few second more before Arthur hung up the phone roughly, tossing it to the other side of the bed. His heart beat was going to quickly and it took him two hours to fall back asleep again. 

In the morning, he woke to only one text message. 

_sorry_

Arthur ignored it and told him about his cat jumping into the bath with his younger sister, for some unfathomable feline reason, and the screeching that inevitably occurred. Eames made a terrible joke about pussy and didn't call him again.

It was breakfast at debate camp, so Arthur was pretty much alone in the college dining hall. Most people didn't bother to go, preferring to eke out a few more minutes of sleep before the first lecture, waiting to suffer through shitty hamburgers instead of coping with shitty powdered eggs. 

Arthur liked this time, though – it was quieter, almost peaceful, and it gave him a few short moments of respite in the hectic pressure cooker that was camp. He nursed his coffee – his third cup, the first two having been consumed quickly and without pleasure, like the necessary medication they were. He added a few more packets of sugar, appreciating this chance to make his caffeine disgustingly sweet, in a way he was too embarrassed to do in public. 

“I thought you didn't drink coffee.”

Arthur stiffened, but he looked up to see Eames smiling down at him. He didn't seem offended, but his eyebrows were raised. 

“I don't, usually. Debate camp doesn't fucking count.” Arthur was grumpy – he was not a morning person, and this fact offended him. He felt like he _should_ be a morning person. All in all, he was irritated and irritated about the irritation. 

Eames just laughed and sat down next to him, a cup of coffee and a muffin in his hands. Arthur tried not to tense up even more, but Eames clearly noticed. His smile faded, a bit.

“Fair enough,” he said, easily, letting it go. “Why are you up so early?”

“I'm here every day – why are _you_?” Arthur said, stealing a bite of Eames's muffin. He didn't object – didn't even seem to be eating it, really. He was just picking it apart, letting it fall into crumbs on the table. 

“Didn't last night,” Eames said, with a shrug. “Figured coffee was necessary to get me through the day.”

Arthur examined him, noted the heavy circles around his eyes, the tired set to his mouth. Arthur frowned – Eames and him hadn't exactly been hanging out all the time since they arrived here a week ago and Arthur wouldn't admit to the fact that he had been avoiding him, but he had assumed that Eames was able to take care of himself. Perhaps he had assumed wrong. He felt a pang of irrational, ridiculous guilt. 

“What were you working on?” Arthur asked, rescuing the last bite of Eames's muffin from disintegration.

Eames waved a couple fingers, as if too tired to make the grand gestures that he preferred. “The case, obviously. Saito kept me up doing rebuttal redoes until like midnight, and I hadn't even started research. I must have written that fucker like four separate times.”

“Part of me wants to say something about the shoe being on the other foot,” Arthur said. Eames stole a sip of Arthur's coffee, having finished his own, and made a face at it. 

“Ugh, sweet – and yes yes, it's all very funny.” Eames took another sip. “Promise to poke me if I fall asleep in lecture today, darling?”

“I will let you snore and humiliate yourself,” Arthur lied. Eames laughed, breathy and weak, as if the effort of putting voice to his amusement was too much for him. 

“So cruel,” Eames said, but subsided before the normal melodrama that he was inclined toward. When Arthur got up to get a muffin for himself, he got Eames a cup of coffee and tried not to process that he knew how he liked it – cream, no sugar. 

Eames smiled at him, and even through his obvious exhaustion, Arthur could see the hint of surprise and a sweetness that put his coffee to shame.

Saito was _insane_. 

Sure, it was top lab, the most advanced group of kids at debate camp, but this was a truly unreasonable amount of work. They had to cut forty cards, write their affirmative case, edit their negative case, and start work on a set of theory blocks – and it was all due_tomorrow_. The dorm lounge – appropriated for the next few weeks as a make shift classroom – was filled with the sounds of the rest of the students objecting. Cobb tried to make soothing noises – Saito simply looked serene and utterly, utterly implacable. 

Arthur didn't waste his time arguing about the assignment – it wasn't as if they were getting graded or anything, if anyone didn't want to do it, they didn't have to. Instead, he hunkered down to his laptop and logged into JSTOR, sending out feelers for anything and everything that might be helpful for researching nuclear weapons. 

A sharp poke to his side interrupted him and he scowled at Eames. 

“Do you wanna work with me tonight?” Eames said, looking hopeful. “Not on the same stuff, I just figure it'd be easier if we suffer together. Much like prisoners of war, bonding behind enemy lines.”

“I will not stick your watch up my ass,” Arthur said, dry. 

Eames sighed. “My son will be so disappointed. No, but really – I have a case of Red Bull with your name on it.”

“That stuff is disgusting,” Arthur said. “But other than that, okay.”

Eames beamed at him and Arthur ducked his head back to his computer, trying to focus on Saito's description of the next drill.

It turned out that Eames's case of Red Bull quite literally had Arthur's name on it. He had scrawled it on the top, black sharpie barely visible against the brightly patterned branding but there. Arthur didn't drink any, but Eames definitely had other takers – most of the lab had decided to stay together and work. Arthur let their collective bitching and someone's Lady Gaga wash over him, bound and determined to finish this goddamn assignment. 

There was an understanding that top lab was not subject to the typical lights out rules. It wasn't fair, and it probably wasn't healthy, but it did mean that it was two AM and they were all huddled in their lab room, curled up around various computers. Nobody would get a picture of the panopticon posted to their door, like the camp usually did to indicate that they knew you were breaking the rules, but the atmosphere was bleak all the same. 

Arthur was sitting on the couch and Eames was on the floor at his feet, absurdly huge headphones on and nodding absently to the beat. Arthur was so busy trying not to watch him that it took him a moment or two to realize that Eames had tugged down his headphones and was talking to him. 

“--worth the effort. What do you think?”

“Uh,” Arthur said, blinking. “What?”

Eames sighed. “I said, I can't decide whether or not I should bother to actually read Chaloupka or just find some policy backfiles.”

“Saito will know,” Arthur said instantly. “He will know and he will make that disappointed face he has, the one where it feels like he is about to start talking about corporate downsizing.”

Eames grimaced. “Oh my god. _Fine_, I'll download the bloody book.”

“He only does this to us because he knows we can handle it.”

“The degree to which you have internalized that is worrying,” Eames said, but he was smiling as he pulled his headphones back on and leaned against the couch. Arthur looked at the top of his head for a long moment, obscurely fascinated by his part, before tearing his eyes away and going back to his work. 

The rest of the lab slowly dropped off as the hours went by. Nobody was actually _finished_ this assignment-from-hell, but people eventually reached the point where they had lost the will to continue or were simply falling asleep at the keyboard. Eventually, it was just Arthur and Eames. 

The room was quiet and dark, several cans of Red Bull empty at Eames's feet and more caffeine pills missing from the blister pack in Arthur's pocket than he would willingly acknowledge. At some point, Arthur had given up on being horizontal and was now stretched out on the floor, chin propped up on Eames's crumpled up sweat shirt.

“Can I use the results of a google search to warrant a topic lit argument?” Eames said. His accent always increased when he was exhausted and Arthur was just tired enough to let himself enjoy it. The screen wavered a little bit in front of his eyes and it took him a moment or two to process that Eames had actually asked a question. 

“Uh – no. No, that's fucking stupid,” Arthur said. It probably wasn't as caustic as it should have been, but Eames nodded wearily above him. 

“Yeah,” he said and paused. “Well. Do you have a literature review article I could look at?”

Arthur hummed a little in assent and emailed it to Eames unprompted. He was so close. _So fucking close_. All he had to do was finish this one last black, this one last little interpretation, and he would be _done_. It may be five AM, he may have lecture in just a few hours and a long day of work after that, but he was _almost done_. 

His head felt tight and too heavy on his neck, and the simple effort of moving his fingers to type felt nearly impossible. He misspelled the word “ground” four times in a row, which took doing. But he managed it, finally, typed a few more characters and then pressed CTRL-S with a solemn finality. 

Attaching the variety of documents, he emailed them to Cobb and Saito. The subject line was “I FUCKING HATE YOU” but he thought that they would understand. The moment he pushed send was motherfucking catharsis. 

“Done,” he breathed, suddenly elated. “I'm fucking done.” 

He twisted so he could smile up at Eames, who managed to weakly smile in return. 

“It might take me a little while longer,” he said. “God, I fucking hate writing things out – this is why I never work like this.” 

Arthur pulled himself up to sit next to Eames, peering over to see what he was doing. He raised his eyebrows. 

“That's all you've done?” 

“Fuck you very much,” Eames snapped. “I hate typing, you fucking know that.” 

Eames was on the last part of the assignment, but he had a ways to go. He typed slower than most people and his spelling was awful – Eames had told him once, some other impossibly late and quiet night, that he was considerably dyslexic. It made typing difficult and writing in general frustrating. It was why Eames was always so exhausted at debate camp – he was quite possibly the smartest person Arthur had ever met (not that he would ever say that out loud) but the amount of writing that everyone expected of them here was absurd. 

Arthur watched Eames scowl at his computer and then suddenly took it away from him. Sleep could wait a little while longer. 

“You dictate,” he said. “I'll type.”

His tone brooked no argument. Eames stared at him for a moment, his fingers still twitching as if expecting to continue typing. His eyes were dark and unreadable, face blank. Arthur held his breath, suddenly uncertain about Eames's reaction, before Eames slowly nodded and took a breath. 

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. So, subpoint A is predictability--”

Eames spoke quickly, but Arthur was determined to keep up and fast enough to handle it. He pretty much wrote down exactly what Eames told him to, only arguing about the peculiarities of an argument once or twice. Eames slowly relaxed into the arrangement, the tension draining out of his body as he slumped against Arthur, watching the cursor spell out his words on the screen. 

While Arthur finished up the formatting for one of the shells, Eames said, “God, I wish I could get you to do this all the time.” 

He sounded impossibly relieved, almost awed, and Arthur had the sudden urge to offer to do exactly that –even though that was patently ridiculous and impossible besides. 

“Don't get used to it,” he said, attempting to sound grumpy. Eames smiled up at him like he didn't believe it and Arthur frowned mightily back. It probably wasn't very convincing, though. He felt almost giddy.

“One more, don't get distracted,” Arthur said. Eames rolled his eyes, called him a slave-driver, and continued on. A few minutes later, they were finished – both of them, _only_ them. They were the only ones who had lasted. Eames simply stared at the screen and then took it back from Arthur to email it out. 

The laptop lid closed a final sounding click. It was six thirty AM. They had an hour and a half until the first lecture and Arthur, at least, had no intention of sleeping. 

“Let's go to breakfast,” Arthur said, breaking the easy silence. 

Eames groaned. “It's _awful_ and not worth moving.” 

“No, I mean, let's go off campus. There's a diner within walking distance and we have time,” Arthur said. 

“Why, _Arthur_,” he said, his voice arch and his eyebrows raised. “Are you suggesting that we break the very specific camp rules not to wander? Are you proposing _mischief_?”

Arthur couldn't help but smile, enjoying the way that Eames smiled back. “I do believe I am.” 

So, they did. They went to breakfast, ordered massive quantities of food and coffee. Eames flirted with the waitress and ordered another side of hashbrowns once he had cleared his plate. Arthur covered his eggs in ketchup and Eames mocked him relentlessly. They were both wearing yesterdays clothes, and they probably smelled foul, but Arthur felt like he was high or like he was about to float away – even bloated as he was with greasy breakfast food. 

On the way back, Eames bummed a cigarette from some hippy and Arthur couldn't even bring himself to scowl that hard. 

They were a few minutes late to the lecture on international relations and Cobb stopped mid-sentence when they walked in. Arthur knew he was going to get shit about this, too, but his belly was full and Eames passed him a drawing of John Mearsheimer with devil horns in the middle of Cobb explaining about the different forms of realism and he had _finished the assignment_. Everything, for the moment, for now, was alright with his world.

“You honestly haven't seen _Bonnie and Clyde_?” Eames said, his voice tinged with mock astonishment and no small amount of pity. 

They were sitting outside a dorm room, waiting for the last pair of debaters to be done. Arthur's bad luck held, and he was hitting Eames in the very first practice round. Arthur wasn't nervous, not exactly – the pair of them had debated _a lot_ over the years and he was sort of used to it. He liked it, even – Eames was infuriating, unpredictable, but never boring. 

“I'm not a big fan of old movies,” Arthur said. 

Now Eames just looked appalled. “What sort of movies _do_ you like?”

Arthur shrugged. “I don't know. The normal ones, I guess? I don't really watch that many movies.”

It was almost funny how Eames's face kept developing new depths of horror. Arthur couldn't help but laugh at him – he looked ridiculous. “Now you know how I feel when I see your clothing.” 

“No, no – you are always angry with me, darling, I'm just saddened. I'm near to weeping from it,” Eames said. “You must watch it with me tonight. It's on netflix, we can stream it.” 

“Fuck no. I don't have that kind of time,” Arthur said. “Cobb is going to make me do redos until I fall over.” 

“Come on,” he said, nudging Arthur in the side. “You really need to see it, it's absolutely brilliant. Faye Dunaway is _gorgeous_\--” Eames paused them, almost imperceptibly, and gave Arthur a sidelong look that he wasn't entirely sure how to interpret “-- as is Warren Beatty. It's a lovely, lovely movie.” 

“I value sleep over perving on dead celebrities.” 

“Neither of them are dead,” he said, scandalized. “I'd probably still fuck Faye Dunaway, even though she's like seventy.” 

“That's disgusting,” Arthur said, trying not to snicker. It would only encourage him – and sure enough, he looked delighted. 

“I'd throw myself into her sweet embrace, soft thin skin, age mottled hands--” 

“If you continue, I will throw myself off this _building_,” Arthur said. Eames grinned at him and leaned over to pluck the pack of gum out of Arthur's pocket. He felt the soft brush of Eames's fingers at the waistband of his trousers and tried not to shiver. 

“I'll tell you what,” Eames said, finally, after tucking the gum back away. “If I win the debate, we watch the movie. Sounds good?”

“What do I get if I win?” Arthur asked. 

“Well, what do you want?” Eames said. 

Arthur looked at him and couldn't speak for a long moment. Eames was smiling down at his papers, fingers fussing with the silver foil that had once contained the stick of gum. He looked relaxed and easy and _happy_, even – Arthur didn't flatter himself that he was the cause, but he liked being around Eames like this. He liked looking at Eames. Some small part of him, some courageous segment that he didn't have the balls to listen to knew exactly what he wanted to ask for. 

“Well?” Eames said, looking up and shifting that smile towards him. “What will my forfeit be?”

“If I win,” Arthur said, slowly. “You will never wear that mustard yellow shirt at a tournament again.”

Eames laughed. “High stakes, sir. I love that shirt.” 

Arthur smiled back at him and cursed himself for being a coward.

Arthur won the debate, but it was a near thing. 

He loved everything about debating, loved the push and pull of it, the adrenaline and exhilaration He loved how Eames listened to his carefully constructed arguments and knew instantly the question to pull them apart, the small missing link that separated the claim from its conclusion. He even loved the way that Eames needled him in cross-examination, laughing and mocking him and generally being an asshole. 

Arthur was cooler in debates, more controlled and professional, but Eames made him snap back at him, mock his pronunciation of hegemony, and make a crack about Schmitt being a Nazi. 

“Ah, yes, darling – that may very well be the case, but it should only make him more qualified to discuss the nature of state violence, don't you think?”

“This is my CX, Mr. Eames. I ask the questions.”

Eames rolled his eyes and Arthur could see Cobb laughing at them in the back of the room, leaning back in his chair and looking deeply entertained. 

Arthur pressed Eames right back, severed the link between violence and justice, attacked the warrants on the critical theory that he loved so much, questioned whether a joke about pornography counted as an argument, even for Zizek. They tussled and fought and it was, perhaps, the most fun that Arthur has ever had. 

And when Eames sat down after his second affirmative rebuttal, out of breath and panting to the same beat that the timer was beeping, Arthur couldn't help but beam at him. Eames beamed right back. 

Cobb had to clear his throat before they looked back at him to hear the reason for decision and his critique. 

On their way out, Eames grinned over at him and said, “Well. I guess I'll have to get you to watch _Bonnie and Clyde_ some other time.”

He didn't even seem upset that he had lost. Arthur understood the feeling. 

\- - - 

Debate camp was always an awesome experience (immense amounts of work and learning, lots of other nerdy people), but it sucked especially worse to leave it this year. Eames's flight was a few hours after Arthur's, but he was up and about as Arthur was getting on the shuttle. 

He stood against the wall near the door as Arthur dragged his suitcase downstairs, hands in his pockets and examining the floor. 

Arthur bit his lip when he looked at him and didn't know what to say. It was a relief when Eames finally noticed that he was there and smiled at him, a bit strained around the edges but real. 

“I'm sure I'll see you?” Eames said. 

“Of course,” Arthur said. “All the same tournaments as last year.”

Eames made a faint noise in agreement and looked down again, scratching at his forehead in the way he always did when he wanted a cigarette but was around too many adults to indulge. Ariadne punched him in the side – fucking _hard_\-- as she passed him, but she didn't turn to acknowledge his scowl. 

“Well,” Arthur said, finally. “Goodbye, I guess.” 

“Yeah,” Eames said. “See you later.” 

Arthur lingered a moment more, wanting something – he wasn't entirely sure what – but he finally forced himself to move, his suitcase scraping against the pavement. 

A few weeks after he had gotten home, back in the loneliness of his home town, he received a package. In it was a mustard yellow shirt, some matches, and a note – _just so you know I'm a man of my word. (ps: lighter fluid would work better than matches for burning it, but I don't think you can male that)._

He shoved the shirt to the back of his drawer, but he didn't throw it away or burn it. He texted Eames – _mail, not male_ and Eames just sent him a winking smiley face in return. 

At the end of the summer, just as Arthur was starting to get antsy with inactivity, his family went to China. His dad had to go for work (he was in the State Department) and had decided to make an impromptu little vacation out of it, dragging the rest of them along with him. When Arthur was packing, he saw Eames’s shirt bundled up at the back of his drawer – looking forelorn and oddly lonely. 

He didn’t take it out (he refused to let himself be that ridiculous), and studiously ignored it for the rest if his packing. 

They were in China for three weeks and it was fun, Arthur guessed, but sorta disconcerting. It was strange being such a minority, surrounded by people that didn’t look like him, spoke a different language, ate different food. There was nothing that was easy, nothing simply comfortable. Part of Arthur loved that, enjoyed learning bits and pieces of Mandarin and testing it out on his dad’s tolerant colleagues. He liked trying congee and duck feet with spicy mustard sauce and the thousand year old eggs ubiquitous at the hotel’s breakfast buffet. 

Still, when Arthur got home, he ate four Big Macs just because he could and left the TV on MTV for hours, let it cycle through shitty reality show after shitty reality show. 

Walking into the season opener felt a little like that. Debate was melted American cheese and Flava Flav to him – comforting, familiar. Home. 

There was the pack of debate coaches near the door, some of them smoking, some just hanging out, but all there. For some reason, socializing in the world of college coaches and judges happened primarily via tobacco. He heard them laugh and talk, heard someone shouting about Zizek, and he couldn’t help but smile like a fool as he entered the Student Union of this campus, where all the pairings were released and everything was located. 

Of course, just at that moment, Eames sidled up. 

Eames beamed at him, looking too happy to see him, and stuck his thumb in one of Arthur’s dimples. Arthur flinched away without even meaning to, and Eames’s smile faltered a little bit. 

“Hey,” he said, still happy, still grinning. “Look at _you_”

Arthur didn’t really know what to say, glancing down at himself. He was wearing a suit, like he always was, and his messenger bag was on his shoulder. Eames was dressed with his typical joy de vivre. He was wearing green corduroys and a brown jacket, his shirt a deep orange color. 

“I think the correct imperative is look at you,” Arthur said. “Or, rather, _don’t_.” 

Eames laughed at him and slung his arm around Arthur’s shoulders. “You are eminently predictable, darling, you should be embarrassed.” 

He fished something out of his pocket and handed it to Arthur. It was a short note in an envelope and when he took it out, it read (in a reasonable facsimile of Arthur’s own handwriting), _You will make fun of my clothing before you greet me, you bastard_. 

Underneath the note was a small sketch of Eames himself, done cartoony and rough, frowning tragically. 

He snorted with laughter and hit Eames in the shoulder, wriggling out from under his arms. 

“You’re an asshole,” Arthur said, but didn’t mean it. 

“I missed you too,” Eames said. “Now, come sit by me – I have claimed the best table in the place.” 

Eames’s friends usually treated Arthur with a sort of sticky courtesy. They weren’t rude, exactly, just not particularly friendly either. They weren’t his friends and Arthur was not in the habit of liking many people. People were not in the habit of liking him. Rarely, though, were people quite as annoyed with him as Maria appeared to be just at this moment, for no reason that Arthur could discern. 

She glared at him as he sat down at the table, lead there by Eames’s hand gripping tight to his upper arm. 

Eames also got a sharp, displeased look from her, so at least he wasn’t alone in her displeasure. Maybe she was just having a bad day or something. 

“Have a good summer, Arthur?” she said. Nope. Nope, that was pointed – she had a problem with him. 

“Yes, thank you. What about you?” Arthur did his best to be perfectly pleasant, not figuring she was worth an argument. Far be it from the day where he could be intimidated by some uppity asshole with barely any talent and no redeeming features to distract from her paltry debate ability. Eames liked her – said she was fearless and loyal– but Eames had notoriously bad taste in companions. Look at the time he spent with Arthur. 

Eames looked back and forth between them, uncharacteristically nervous. 

“Arthur went to China,” Eames offered. 

Maria raised her eyebrows. “Is that why he didn’t call you?” 

Arthur flinched and tried to make a joke of it. “Wouldn’t want to get Eames on some kinda list – the Chinese government might take exception.” 

She didn’t look like she was buying it, whatever it was – maybe the necessity of his existence. Arthur did his best not to fidget. “Don’t know how to use email?”

“Maria!” Eames snapped. 

Arthur stood. “Sorry, but I have to – I gotta work.” 

He fled, ducking his head to avoid Eames’s eyes, trying not to see the absence of his previous smile. He could feel Eames watch him go, gaze heavy on his back. 

As he left, seeking out Cobb and the rest of his team at the other side of the room, he heard Maria’s voice sharp behind him. 

“Sorry, but you’re too sweet to him, with the way he treats you –“ she said. Arthur stopped listening. 

Arthur avoided Eames. He felt obscurely guilty, but he wasn’t comfortable thinking too hard as to why. He threw himself into his rounds, beating his first two opponents easily and without a flicker of emotion toward them save pity. 

He remembered debating Eames, remembered how _angry_ he would get and knew that Eames would always make him laugh. He liked the way that Eames held his head when he smiled, tilted a little, warm and melty and almost like the expression to could slip into anything in the world. Arthur clenched his fist and forced himself to shake his opponent’s hand, poor bastard, not the least bit of spark in him. 

After the pre-sets and during his lunch break, he hid outside with his vaguely cardboard pizza. Cobb had been pleasant and happy to see him, but Ariadne’s initial friendiness had already devolved into her cheerful, but intrusive, suspicion. 

Arthur sat there, tucked up against the wall, and mindlessly pre-flowed. He came from a school of thought that didn’t really have much respect for self-analysis. 

“Already?” 

Arthur winced, but put on a stern face. “Already what?”

Ariadne snorted and sat down next to him, finishing up a text message and slipping her phone back into her pocket. “Oh, shut up. What did you do?” 

“I don’t know what you are –“

“Eames was also looking for you.” 

“I should be meaner to him,” Arthur said, voice thick with a suddenness that shocked him. “I shouldn’t let him—“

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Ariadne said, flat. “Unless you are more of an asshole than even you think you are.” 

She was looking at him, her face sympathetic and he couldn’t bear to see that expression much longer. 

“I don’t know what he wants from me,” Arthur said. “I don’t know what he wants me to do -- I’m an ass, I make fun of him, and all he does is draw me pictures and make me smile.”

Ariadne sighed. “Why does he have to _want_ something from you? Maybe he just likes you. Maybe you should ask yourself what you want from _him_.” 

Arthur – Arthur _wanted_, that’s all he knew, he didn’t know entirely what, didn’t know entirely how. He wasn’t ignorant of sex and kissing and everything, but this squished feeling in his chest didn’t feel like that sort of thing. He felt like a handful of M&Ms, melting in someone’s palm – hot and inchoate and with all the colors blending together, confusing boundaries. He wanted to see Eames smile and make him laugh and buy him clothes and he was not entirely sure to do with the enormity of the feeling. Maybe it made him a coward, maybe he was acting like a moron, but it flattened him. 

He opened his mouth but he didn’t know what to say. Eames’s arrival was almost a relief. 

Eames had left his jacket somewhere along the way and his hair was a mess. He was slouched, both hands in his pockets. 

“Thanks, Ariadne,” he said. 

“I tattled on you,” she informed Arthur and he couldn’t help but scowl a little bit. She grinned at him, using his shoulder to pull herself to her feet. Behind Eames’s back, she mouthed at him to be good and then was on her way. 

Eames studied him a long moment, reaching up to rub at his eyes in a tired looking way. “Look, I wanted to apologize for Maria – she has something of the wrong idea and she gets. Well, she’s very quick to defend.” 

“What sort of impression does she have?” Arthur’s voice was stiff and cool and he didn’t know why he couldn’t just talk like a normal person sometimes. 

Eames bit his lip and made a little clicking sound, buying time in the same way he did in rounds when you asked him a question he didn’t want to answer. “It’s not important – the thing is, I’ve sorted her out and hopeful she won’t be quite as heinous to you in the future.” 

Arthur wanted to press him, wanted to determine exactly what had been sorted out and how, but Eames did not exactly look forthcoming. So, instead, Arthur smiled at him and said, “Don’t worry about it. Are pairings up yet?”

He relaxed, almost imperceptibly, but Arthur could see the tension leak out of his shoulders. “Yep. We’re hitting, actually – Saito in back.” 

Arthur pulled himself to his feet. “It seems statistically unlikely that we debate as often as we do.”

“Fate is a cruel mistress,” Eames said, easily. “And destiny seems to have a thing for us.” 

Arthur looked at him, looked at the way his hands were still thrust in his pockets instead of slung around his shoulder, looked at the wry twist at the corner of his smile. 

“If you win, I won’t wear a tie tomorrow,” he said. 

Eames’s gait stuttered a little, he fell a few steps behind. When Arthur glanced at him, his face was smooth and comfortably happy. Arthur’s jaw clenched against an upsurge of irrational guilt. 

“And if you win, I _will_ wear a tie,” Eames said. 

“You brought one?”

“I’ll buy one.”

“_I’ll_ buy one,” Arthur said. “Or you’ll pick something horrible.”

Eames, at that, reached out and ruffled Arthur’s hair. Arthur couldn’t bring himself to scowl, even though he shouldn’t reinforce such behavior with a smile. 

“One day, Arthur, one day you will look at me and like what you see, and then I might simply expire from shock.” 

It was amazing that Arthur could scoff, because it felt like he wasn’t breathing. 

\- - - 

Eames won. Arthur didn’t wear a tie, but he brought it to the tournament anyway and gave it to Eames with all the solemnity that a trophy of battle deserved. Arthur caught him touching it with soft fingers later that day and had to look away. 

Arthur knew that he was keeping it in his pocket, watched him debate all the way to finals with continual small touches to his left side, as if it were a token on some medieval knight. He watched him win the tournament with Arthur’s tie in his pocket and watched him pick up the actual, shiny trophy without the same amount of gravity that he had shown earlier in the day over a scrap of fabric. 

It was ridiculous, it was embarrassing, but Arthur couldn’t help watch him anyway. He had been glorious, debating – a tournament this early in the year played exactly to his strengths. Everyone else needed time to prep, time to research, but all Eames needed was an audience. 

And even though Arthur usually hated watching people debate (as it indicated he was no longer in the running himself), he found himself curiously unconcerned about his place in the crowd when every time Eames did something brilliant, he would glance over to check to see if Arthur was listening. 

Arthur found himself playing with his phone, sitting on the plane that was going to take him home, deposit him back into high school, back into the world of pep rallies and english class and spanish subjunctives and all that facing nonsense. He texted Eames, almost as if he could not help it, told him how much it sucked to have a middle seat, bitched about airport security, with the congratulations implied in the margins and white spaces of his words. 

Eames replied near instantly. 

_windw seat, bitches!!!!!! wnted to use mi 4 my trophy. _

Arthur snorted.

_Egomania thwarted by another paying customer?_

_capitalism ruins EVERYTHING :( :( :(_

Arthur laughed and the old woman next to him looked at him as he reeked of sulfur. It was possible, however, that was just the way her face looked -- he didn't know where she got off making faces at him, anyway, given her overwhelming stench of dead roses. 

_You were great today_ he texted back and then (in a small panic) adding, _gotta go, plane leaving._

He turned off his phone, despite the flight attendant not even coming around to check yet, and stared at it until the plane lurched into motion and he was on the way home. Sighing, he got out his copy _The Sound and the Fury_ and lost himself in someone else's stream of consciousness the rest of the way home.

At the next tournament, Arthur found Eames first. He was surrounded by a pack of circuity hanger-ons, people Arthur neither knew or cared about. Maria wasn't around, thank God. (It was possible that Arthur deserved his reputation for being aloof and kind of an asshole, but he didn't so much mind). 

He touched Eames's shoulder to get his attention and couldn't help but smile hoplelessly back when Eames's face lit up. 

“Arthur! Dashing as always,” he said, tugging gently on Arthur's tie. He swatted Eames's hand away and straightened his clothing. 

“Blinding as ever,” Arthur said easily back, pulling up a chair and unceremoniously edging the person currently sitting next to Eames out of the way. 

“Sometimes I feel we have gotten into a rut,” Eames said, false tragedy dripping off of his tone. “Why don't you excite me anymore, baby?”

Eames's friends laughed. Arthur rolled his eyes. 

“Anyway, you interrupted me just as I was bragging about how fucking sweet my new k is.” 

Most people were secretive about their arguments, figuring that people could answer them better if they were able to come to the round with full knowledge of what was going to be said. Eames didn't give a shit; he knew about the things he argued better than anyone else and if that failed to save him, he could always improvise. Vegas magicians had to be envious about Eames's flair for pulling rabbits out of hats and saving rounds in the last speech – God knows that Arthur was. 

At the same time, however, Arthur had known him long enough to pick up his patterns. 

“Five bucks says it's either psychoanalysis or Derrida.”

Eames laughed and fished out his wallet. He tucked a fiver into Arthur's jacket pocket and said, “We really are predictable. Lacan it is – make sure you don't spend it all in one place, dear.” 

Arthur allowed himself to look smug. 

“Here's something the rest of you should know,” Arthur said, briefly flicking his gaze to the rest of the debaters at the table. “It's all unfalsifiable bullshit. Mirror stage my _ass_.”

Eames leered at him. “Do you enjoy holding up mirrors to your ass?”

Arthur rolled his eyes. Again. 

“Your jokes are as bad as your arguments.” 

“And yet, they both get you every time.” 

“If I lose to fucking Lacan, I will actually read _Ecrits_ and write you a motherfucking book report.” 

Eames stuck out his hand. “And if you win, I'll read Rawls, you painfully boring bastard.” 

Arthur shook it. “Preferring rigor and clarity to French nonsense is nothing to be ashamed of.”

Someone else spoke and Arthur startled – he had just about forgotten anyone else was there. 

“How do y'all even know you will hit?”

“Long, _long_ experience,” Eames said, ruefully. “It's fated.”

Turns out, fate didn't want them to debate this weekend. They avoided debating each other the whole time and would have debated in finals, if Eames hadn't lost on a contentious 2-1 in semies. 

The judge who voted for Eames was still arguing with the other two when Arthur poked his head into the crowded room to listen. 

“Just because you don't like the argument doesn't mean that Robert answered it!” 

Robert looked smug. Eames's face was blank, but Arthur could see tension around his eyes. His pen was moving absently on the paper in front of him, as if he was politely taking notes, but Arthur could see that he was just drawing perfect little spirals. From the angle that Arthur was standing, he could see Eames's other hand clenched on his own thigh, knuckles white. 

Someone jostled Arthur on their way out. Arthur caught them, and asked what had happened quietly. 

“Robert ran some silly discourse kritik saying that Eames's argument justified the holocaust. The decision is bullshit.”

Arthur winced. “Thanks.” 

He studied Eames's face some more, tracing the slight twist in his pleasant expression that belied how irritated he was. He was so focused that Cobb's touch to his shoulder made him jump. Cobb whispered in his ear. 

“Tournament says forty-five until finals. Go work up some answers about how you aren't a Nazi.” 

Arthur snorted and whispered back. “Is repeating my Bar Mitzvah chant not good enough?” 

Cobb made a face. “It's a stupid argument – just don't lose to it.” 

Arthur slipped out and planted himself in an out of the way corner. He lost himself in collecting answers, editing and writing and working – he found a card in the introduction to a Carl Schmitt book about how the only thing worse forgetting the Holocaust was refusing to analyze arguments that justified the holocaust. He didn't know how long it had been when Eames appeared in front of him. 

“I bet that you beat Robert. If I win, you write that book report.” 

Arthur laughed. “That's not the way it works – I should win the bet if I win, or it's a conflict of interest.” 

“Win-win for you – you win, you win the tournament.” Eames shrugged. “You lose, you win the bet. And banking on Robert over you is a sucker's bet.” 

Arthur smirked. “I'll take it, only because of the flattery.” 

“Good, “ Eames said, reaching out to ruffle Arthur's hair. “Don't fuck this up.” 

Eames smiled at him and left. Arthur wasted the last ten minutes before the round staring at the spot where Eames had been standing.

The room was packed. Arthur couldn't see Eames, but he knew that he was sitting in the far corner, could imagine the way he was curled up around a piece of paper, sketching instead of flowing. Arthur wasn't offended – Eames was a shitty flower and it was a struggle for him. He barely flowed his own rounds, much less other people. 

Arthur and Robert flipped a coin for sides, Arthur won, and that set the tone for the rest of the round. Robert tried to run his silly arguments and Arthur shut him down. He was thorough, unrelenting, and absolutely fucking dominant. He forced him to actually explain his warrants in cross-x, adopting just the right skeptical tone, pushed all the weak links and assertions out into the open. He even got a few laughs – rare, for him, though these were at how stupid Robert was looking and not at any poor attempt at a joke from Arthur. Robert had a habit of trying to pull some squirrelly shit, but Arthur systematically closed every single on of his options. 

Arthur may not be a Nazi, but his trains would fucking run on _time_. 

When Robert sat down after the 2AR, Arthur knew that he had won. The unanimous vote in his favor felt almost like a formality. As the room clapped and he shook Robert's hand, he caught Eames giving him a thumbs up out of the corner of his eye, and he smiled. 

\- - - 

Arthur had to rush off to catch his flight, but he had enough time to find Eames. 

Eames clapped him on the back, congratulated him, and handed him a battered hardcover copy of Lacan's _Ecrits_. The front cover was faintly ripped, and there was a brown stain (probably coffee) on it as well. It was a well-used and well-loved book, Eames's book, and Arthur rubbed his hand over it almost lovingly. 

“Now shoo! Cobb is looking anxious,” Eames said. 

“See you at Glenbrooks?” 

“Of course. Don't forget your homework – at least two pages, single spaced.” 

Arthur groaned and Eames laughed at him and then Arthur had to rush, hurry hurry hurry from checking in to security to boarding, book in his hand the whole time. It was only when he was seated (aisle seat this time), plane taking off, did he have a chance to open the book. 

On the first, formely blank page, there was now a sketch done in red ink. It was Arthur, drawn as if he was a robot, complete with three piece suit and lasers shooting from his eyes. Underneath, in Eames's lazy scrawl: 

_you may have been the result of top secret DoD research, but you are my favorite genius killer robot._

Arthur couldn't decide between being flattered and offended for one long moment. He wasn't quite sure of the meaning of being called a robot and wanted to protest to the drawing, as perfect as it was, that he did have feelings-- that he wasn't a machine. He settled, however, on being touched. 

He traced the clean lines of his portrait's faintly metallic jaw and decided that while he was fine with the ruthless killer and the genius parts, he had to show Eames he was not a robot. The thought, even as he had it, made him shy away however – but he had to. He would. 

His forehead slightly creased, he turned to the first page and started reading.

_excerpts from an email from Arthur to Eames, entitled I FUCKING HATE LACAN HERE IS YOUR FUCKING BOOK REPORT. It is, not counting the lengthy prelude, exactly two pages double spaced, with an extra few pages consisting entirely of quotes from the book followed by an steadily increasing number of frowny faces._

Eames, I respect you and your intellectual ability, and I am humble enough to consider (briefly) the possibility that I simply don't know enough to understand this, but wait a second, I'm lying – this book is fucking bullshit and I seriously don't understand why you like him so much...

… And then there are some more pointless figures! Why does he feel the need to explain things via arrows and greek letters? It would make sense to me to do so if they made things clear or helped to elucidate the concepts that he is trying to explain, but no. It seems mostly to make things more confusing. Only now it is confusing in pictures! . . . 

… Apparently “fantasmatization” means “the radical imaginary.” Thanks, google. That still didn't help to make sense of this fucking sentence, though: 

_The specular relationship with the other--by which I at first wanted, in fact, to return the theory of narcissism, so crucial to Freud 's work, to its dominant position in the function of the ego--can only reduce to its effective subordination the whole fantasmatization brought to light by analytic experience by interposing itself, as the schema expresses it, between this shy of the Subject and this beyond of the Other, where speech in effect inserts it, insofar as the existences that are grounded in speech are entirely at the mercy of its faith._ :-( :-( :-( … 

. . . Honestly, I don't think I'm getting much out of this. This part is talking about how Lacan is “heralding a return to Freud in psychoanalysis.” Given that this is the first psychoanalysis I have ever read, I can only shrug. So, you should click this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XID_W4neJo … 

. . . I do actually sort of like the idea that the Descarte's _cogito_ functions as a metonymy for the self allowing us psychological comfort by artificially creating stability. That makes sense to me – humanities insistence that we are rational, that we are making good decisions, while it really is all a psychological mess. I'm not sure I buy it, completely (surely we can actually make rational decisions occasionally) but I am not loathing this discussion as much as the previous essays in here. Here is another youtube link as your reward for my happiness. I know you will laugh at this one, you pretentious asshole: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0dM6j7pzQA . . . 

. . . Aaaaaand, all good will abruptly vanishes: _Thus, in considering the vertices of the symbolic triangle-I as the ego-ideal, M as the signifier of the primordial object, and P as the position in A of the Name-of-the-Father-we can see how the homologous pinning of the signification of the subject S under the signifier of the phallus may have repercussions on the support of the field of reality delimited by the quadrangle_. Fuck you, Lacan. . . . 

. . . Honestly, I shouldn't make you read Rawls as corollary to this. I should make you read fucking Hegel. In _German_. I hate you so much. 

(see you next week!)

Arthur

Arthur knew something was wrong when Eames didn’t find him first. 

Typically, Arthur didn’t even have a chance to get through the door before Eames would sidle up, say something obnoxious, and make him smile. Arthur was even in the habit of lingering near the door, wasting a few minutes shooting the shit with one judge or another, nodding a half-hearted hello to Robert or trying to avoid glowing in embarrassing pleasure at Saito’s restrained smile, just so he could get the squirm in his stomach at Eames coming out the door to greet him, as eager as a puppy. 

No Eames today, though, and Chicago in November was fucking _cold_. 

He ended his conversation with Robert rather perfunctorily and rushed inside, grateful for the blast of heat. God, he hated this tournament. 

Ariadne had already staked out a table in the cafeteria, defending it from all strangers with the fierce possessiveness of a lioness over a kill. Arthur put down his stuff gratefully, and opened his mouth to speak-- 

“No, I haven’t seen Eames,” Ariadne said. Arthur turned his gape into a glare, but she just rolled her eyes at him. “Go find him! You have about fifteen minutes before pairings are released to do your little courting dance.”

“There is no dancing involved,” Arthur said. It was a shitty comeback. 

Ariadne snorted. “Sometimes I feel like David Attenborough.” 

Arthur tried to leave with his dignity intact, but Ariadne made it difficult –

“See here, the rare and beautiful plumage of the Arthur-bird, clad in his finest and off to seek his mate.” 

& & & 

Eames wasn’t in line for food. He wasn’t near the bathrooms, or with the rest of his team, and his coach said that she just assumed he was with Arthur. Arthur tried not to think about this and kept looking. 

He wasn’t with Yusuf, smoking in a different hidden spot than the one the coaches used. He wasn’t lurking by tab and Cobb hadn’t seen him. Arthur checked the entry list again – well, he was supposed to be here. And G-brooks wasn’t _that_ big – he had to be here somewhere. 

He wasn’t responding to text messages or phone calls – the only text message that Arthur had received during the past ten minutes was a link to a youtube video from Ariadne (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEh-zclVo44 ). 

Arthur tried not to be worried when the pairings were released and he still hadn’t found him. Arthur was hitting some kid from a school he didn’t recognize – Chicago UDL, maybe, but definitely local – flight B. Eames was debating halfway across the school, flight A; if Arthur rushed, he might have time to spend a few minutes with him before he’d have to do his thing. He felt a little bit like a stalker, but it couldn’t be helped – really, Eames was bringing this on himself with his atypical behavior. 

When Arthur got to the room, cheeks flushed from the outside cold, Eames’s opponent was sitting outside the room and smiled up at Arthur when he rushed over. 

“Are you –“

“No,” Arthur said. “I’m just looking for him. He not here yet?” 

The kid looked a little off put by Arthur’s brusqueness, but Arthur felt no obligation to be warm to strangers. That was more Eames’s thing.

“No, but neither is the judge, so it’s no big deal –“ the kid kept talking. Arthur stopped listening and took out his phone, calling Eames once again. No answer, still. 

Arthur tried not to be worried, but it was tough. It was like Eames got off the team van and then evaporated, disappearing entirely. Maybe he was kidnapped—was his family wealthy or politically powerful? Was it bad that Arthur didn’t even know that? Maybe it was a mafia hit – maybe Eames was the heir to some New York crime family. Was there a British crime family? Perhaps Arthur had an overactive imagination, but his fondness for true crime novels and thrillers sometimes overwhelmed him. 

He called Eames one last time and didn’t hang up at the voicemail again, instead he left a message promising dire retribution if Eames wasn’t dead. 

The judge for the round showed up. Eames’s opponent smiled and greeted him, looking gratified when the judge didn’t share Arthur’s icy complete lack of engagement. 

They went inside the room and Arthur began to be worried that Eames would forfeit – a more realistic fear than he was dead in some Chicago ditch. 

Arthur’s phone rang – it was Ariadne. 

“I found him and he’s on his way to his round.” 

Arthur felt relief splash him in the face, trickling down his spine. “Where was he?”

“Sleeping in a stairwell – he looks like death.” 

Worry started up again and trebled at Eames’s appearance, all but staggering around the corner. His nose was cherry-red and his cheeks didn’t have the healthy flush of cold – instead, he looked pallid underneath a burn that looked like fever, eyes sunken and over-bright. His shoulders were slumped and his hair was sticking up. There was a crease in his cheek and more in his clothes, giving off the rumpled look of troubled sleep. 

Arthur hung up on Ariadne. 

“You look awful,” Arthur said. 

“And you always greet me in the same way,” Eames said, with a tired sounding laugh. 

“Why aren’t you in bed?”

Eames was about to respond, but was interrupted by a coughing fit that sounded like it was tearing up his throat on the way out. Arthur was horrified and took a few quick steps back. 

“No, seriously—“ 

“The show must go on,” Eames said, with a mighty sounding sniff. “Besides, I can win this thing even halfway to the grave and high on cough syrup.”

The arrogance was a shadow of its usual presence, hollow. The judge stuck his head out the door –

“You the debater?” he said and Eames nodded. “Get in here, let’s start this thing.” 

Eames sighed a little and hitched his bag further up on his shoulder, nodding. The judge retreated back into the room. 

Arthur studied him for another beat. “Try not to keel over in the NC.” 

Eames rolled his eyes. “I am not _consumptive_. I just have a bit of a cold.” 

Before he could think better of it, Arthur surged forward and gave Eames a hug, his body reassuringly warm and solid underneath Arthur’s arms. He released him and backed up quickly, leaving Eames to blink at him in surprise. 

“It’s good to see you. Now I’m going to go disinfect my entire body.” 

Arthur turned and walked stiffly away, not daring to glance back. 

& & & 

During the rest of flight A, Arthur used his killer robot organizational skills for good instead of evil, finding a blanket, a pillow, cough drops, and a hot cup of tea with honey and lemon. He knew that Eames preferred his “cuppas” with milk and sugar, but Arthur’s mom always said honey was good for sore throats. 

He bundled the care package together and stuck it outside Eames’s room, a post-it note stuck to the top:

_text me your location before you crash, so I don’t have to spend another goddamn eternity looking for you_. 

And then, it was time for Arthur to debate. 

In the middle of his 1AR, his phone vibrated against his hip. Arthur didn’t let this phase him, and just carried on – extending his criterion, extending offense that linked to it, and, just for the hell of it, littering his opponent’s case with turns. Arthur was a firm believer in overkill. 

During the competent, but nowhere near sufficient, NR, Arthur discreetly checked his phone. 

_u r my fav. by rm 210_

After his opponent dropped the giant turn Arthur placed on his NC and didn’t even bother to extend his own criterion, the rest of the round was perfunctory and Arthur barely thought of it. His 2AR was almost condescending – a nasty tonal habit that Arthur had a real problem breaking. The judge frowned at him, but Arthur just shrugged and continued kicking ass. 

He just wanted to get out of here, and fidgeting the entire way through the RFD. He had about twenty minutes until the next round and wanted to go check on Eames. 

Arthur was kind of an asshole, but he was also completely comfortable with that. Arthur just had a lot of little binaries in his brain – good debaters/everyone else, friends/everyone else – and had trouble giving a shit if you fell on the wrong half. Perhaps this is why most people hated the circuit, but Arthur took comfort in the fact that he behaved like this in his highschool, too – it was garden variety dickishness, not the special breed of circuity douchebaggery. 

Finally, finally the judge stopped talking. 

Instead of the awkward handshake that his opponent clearly preferred, Arthur gave the judge a quick nod and said thank you, packing up his shit at the speed of light and rushing out of there. He grabbed a pairing on his way to the second floor, just so he wouldn’t have to leave Eames until absolutely necessary. 

When he got to the stairwell near room 210, he was displeased to see Eames sitting up. At least he had covered himself with the blanket, cup of tea in his hand. His opponent from the last round was chattering away and Eames had a tired expression of friendly welcome on his face – see, this is where pleasantries got you.

Arthur walked up, crossed his arms, and frowned mightily. He didn’t bother acknowledging the blind jackass who was preventing Eames from napping. 

“Why aren’t you asleep?” 

Eames smiled at him, but the other dude startled, turning around to look at Arthur. 

“Oh. It’s _you_”

Arthur continued to ignore him, choosing instead to soak up the warmth in Eames’s face – warmth which might be derived from fever. He leaned over to check Eames’s forehead – yep. Probably fever. 

“Oh, it’s _you_” Eames echoed, his tone amused and fond. “Did your round go well, darling?”

“Yes, no thanks to you,” Arthur said. “Your breach of quarantine is very distracting.”

Arthur fished out some Purell and washed his hands. 

“I live to plague you,” Eames said, and then coughed. “Or, perhaps, give you the plague.” 

His voice was rueful and Arthur couldn’t help but feel himself soften, just a little bit. 

“Did you manage to win?” he asked, sitting down next to Eames. The other kid moved over unprompted. 

“He beat me, even as sick as he is,” the kid said, sounding admiring. Arthur frowned at him again, but this time with an edge of confusion – his opponents rarely sounded that pleased to lose. 

Eames now looked like he was concealing amusement. “It was a good debate,” he said, all graciousness and manners. 

“Probably wasn’t. And won’t ever be this tournament unless you _rest_” Arthur said, dismissing their opinions. 

“Are you his mother?” the other kid joked. Arthur raised his eyebrows at him. 

“I’m sorry, do I know you?” 

The kid held out his hand, “I’m –“

“No no, you misunderstand – that wasn’t an invitation. That was a polite dismissal, so that you can leave and let Eames sleep.” 

He looked offended and Eames sent him a half-hearted grimace of apology. 

“It is probably best that I rest—“ Eames said, and the kid was already standing up. 

“No no, that makes sense. I’m sorry – thanks for the advice and I hope you feel better. Good luck!” 

He didn’t bother acknowledging Arthur as he left – a situation Arthur had no problem with. 

When he was gone, Eames punched Arthur in the shoulder. “You should be nicer.” 

“You should be smarter. Go to sleep, I refuse to talk to you anymore – we are both in flight B, I’ll wake you up when it’s time to go.” 

Eames looked at him a long moment and then nodded, already looking exhausted. The public friendliness he had been aping for the stranger drained away and left him wilted. He finished the last gulp of tea, propped the pillow up against Arthur, and let himself sleep. 

Arthur meant to work – took out his computer and everything – but found himself watching Eames instead. His face was relaxed in sleep, even though his nose was red and abused looking, his breath harsh and somewhat labored. The face was familiar and made him feel like Arthur had a fever, too hot and too cold at once. 

He managed to resist the urge to stroke Eames’s hair, but watched him all the way until the point he had to shake him awake to get to their next round.

Arthur won his round easily. It was gone from his mind by the time he had left the room. 

The service was terrible in the school, so he slipped outside to call his mom. He waved hello to the dude who had just judged him, who was going outside to have a cigarette. Out of some obscure sense of privacy, Arthur turned the corner and huddled against the brick in a futile attempt to avoid the chill. 

“Hey mom--”

She sounded like she was doing something, with the dishwasher loud in his ears. 

“Hold on, hold on--”

Arthur fell silent, smiling a little despite himself, as he heard the bang and clatter of her leaving the kitchen. He thought he even heard the clicking noise of his black lab’s nails against the tile. 

“Okay, good now. What’s up? Are you dying, you never call at debate tournaments.”

Arthur rolled his eyes in the principle of it, despite the fact she couldn’t see him. “I’m not dying, I’m doing fine. I just-- well. I just figured out what I want for Chanukah.” 

“Oh?” she said, already sounding distracted. 

“Well. Can I go to New York after Christmas for a few days? I want to visit my friend Eames.” 

“Oh.” Her voice sounded entirely different, decidedly more interested, and a fair bit amused. “Eames is an interesting name.”

“He hates his first name,” Arthur explained, obscurely embarrassed. “So, can I?”

“Well, I’d have to speak with his parents. But it seems like it would be fine.”

Arthur let out a breath. “Awesome, okay, gotta go.” 

She laughed at him and then hung up. 

He closed his phone and went back inside, satisfied with his plan. 

\- - -

Eames was sleeping in the same spot, curled up around the charger of his lap top as if it were a hot water bottle. Arthur watched him for a moment and checked the time -- he had to leave for the round soon, it was okay to wake him up. 

Nudging him with his toe, he tried to restrain his laughter as Eames blinked up at him, dazed and confused. 

“I have a bet for you,” Arthur said. 

“Wha?”

“If you manage to avoid dying this weekend, I’ll come visit you in New York over Christmas break. If you manage to _break_, well. You can name your forfeit.”

Eames still looked confused. “Wait. Really?”

Arthur smiled at him until Eames started to smile back through his sniffles, eyes bleary and fever-bright. 

“Deal?” Arthur prompted.

“Deal,” Eames agreed, sounding more lively. 

“Now I have to go prep,” Arthur said, and turned on his heel. He tried not to grin like an idiot in public -- if it had to happen, he was going to hide himself in a bathroom stall or something. 

\- - - 

Eames survived. He survived, eked out a winning record, and actually _broke_ to out-rounds. Arthur wasn’t entirely sure how he managed it, considering he needed Arthur to come find him and wake him up before every round so that he wouldn't sleep through them. 

Perhaps the cold medicine was only good for him, or something -- gave him a little bit more woozy unpredictability. 

The bastard even managed to get a _bid_, which just made no fucking sense. Arthur peeked his head in to watch Eames’s decision (his having been an open and shut 3-0 in his favor), just in time to watch Eames interrupting his judge’s RFD with a ten minute coughing fit. His opponent moved subtly away, looking horrified. Arthur wondered, vaguely, if it was germophobia or sheer embarrassment that the dude had managed to lose to a guy on his death bed. 

Whatever, he doesn’t matter. 

Once Eames pulled himself together and the judge got to finish talking, Arthur slipped back out. 

His phone vibrated. 

_i think ths mens i own u._

Arthur felt his heart jump and shut his phone without replying. 

\- - - 

Eames lost in the next round, but he mostly seemed grateful. He seemed like he was gearing up to hang around and watch Arthur’s rounds, but Arthur forced him to go back to the hotel and sleep. 

“I don’t need you to watch me,” Arthur said. 

“You are ruining my fun,” Eames said. “There’s nothing I like better than watching you destroy people.” 

His banter sounded whiny when he wasn’t feeling good. 

“I’ll tell you war stories. Go sleep -- our bet is off if you die before you get home.”

Eames rolled his eyes. “Who knew you turned into a very aggressive mother hen? I mean, the aggressive thing is a given, but the clucking was unexpected.”

“Go. To. Sleep.” 

Eames coughed and the fight seemed to go out of him. 

“Yeah, okay. If I don’t see you --”

Arthur interrupted him with a hug. He could feel Eames stiffen under his arms, hot and solid. He could feel the slip of clothes over skin, the faint movement of breath. 

“I’ll see you in a few weeks,” Arthur said into Eames’s shoulder. “Get better.” 

He clung until Eames relaxed and hugged him back properly. He could feel the huff of Eames’s laughter against his ear. 

“You are really terrible with illness, aren’t you?” Eames said, but he sounded fond. 

Arthur let him go and backed away quickly. 

“I-- I need to go disinfect myself now,” Arthur said, glancing away. 

Eames smiled at him. He looked a little shell-shocked. 

“Win it for me?” 

Arthur did.

\- - -

Christmas happened and Arthur’s family ate dan dan noodles and twice cooked pork, his mouth burning from the chicken with chiles and fumbling to eat rice with chopsticks. His father showed the rest of them up, chopsticks moving gracefully from dish to dish, while Arthur struggled to feed himself without littering the table with bright red detritus.

It was lovely, like it always was, but Arthur felt like his whole being was focused on tomorrow, tomorrow when he’d get on an airplane and go see Eames, go to New York in the wintertime and give Eames the Christmas present that had been hiding underneath Eames’s old horrible shirt in his drawer.

After they had finished and his mother hugged him, kissing his hair with a resounding smack, Arthur wriggled out of the grip of family and togetherness and scurried to his room, fishing his phone out of his pocket.

Before he could call, it vibrated -- _Eames calling_.

Arthur forced himself to wait two rings and then answered, his “Hey” breathless all the same.

“Hey,” Eames said, and Arthur could hear him vibrating with excitement. “My mum wanted me to call and verify that we should pick you up at JFK at noon, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Arthur said. “Yeah, that’s right.”

Eames smiled (Arthur could tell – it was in the subtle twist of his voice) and said, “Good. See you then.”

\- - -

The next morning was wickedly cold and far too early, but Arthur managed to repress his usual grumpiness for the entire ride to the airport.

“So when am I going to get to meet this Eames? Or even learn his first name?”

His mother was beyond repressing grumpiness and was full on chipper – Arthur was too excited to even be annoyed.

“I have been forbidden from telling anyone,” Arthur said. “It begins with a D, that’s all you may know.”

“David? Dale? Daniel?” she said, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel in time to the music.

“What part of _forbidden_ don’t you understand?”

“I bet it is something atrocious. Is it Dagbert?”

Arthur laughed and touched the phone in his pocket, wanting to text Eames the suggestion even though it was criminally early and it would be rude to wake him.

His mother smiled at him, turning her eyes away from the road for an uncomfortable moment, only focusing back on the driving when he yelped at the breaklights in front of them.

“He seems like a good kid. I’m glad you did debate,” she said, and she sounded nostalgic.

Arthur knew she was remembering middle school, remembering her bookish kid getting into _fights_ at school, coming home with a bloody nose and a split lip and sullen, lonely eyes. He remembered looking out of those eyes, remembered feeling alone in a chic private school full of kids more focused on money and connections than learning, uncomfortable with Arthur’s slim build and sharp tongue. Debate gave him a place where he was normal in the good ways and exceptional in even more – it was much easier going to school when he could hold his successes and friendships in his heart, like the best kind of secret.

“He is a good kid,” Arthur said, letting the rest of it lie. He rested his head against the window and turned the volume up higher, laughing when his mom sang about a starman waiting in the sky even more nasally than David bowie.

\- - -

When he got off the plane and passed out of the secure area, Eames was waiting for him. He held a sign with that didn’t have Arthur’s name, just a vivid, cartoony sketch of a robot in a tie and a waistcoat, the grown brother of the rendering in the Lacan book.

Arthur laughed, but the noise was cut off by Eames barreling toward him and taking him up in a hug.

Arthur hugged him back, forcing down his self-consciousness and just enjoying the heaviness of Eames in his arms.

A tired looking woman with blonde hair from a bottle and kind eyes walked up to them, much more sedately.

“You must be Arthur,” she said, when Eames finally released him. “I have heard an absurd amount about you.”

“Mum,” Eames complained, rolling his eyes.

“Only good things!” she said. “Is that your only bag?”

She held out her hand and introduced herself as Ms. Eames-but-you-must-call-me-Helen, and Arthur shook it, seeing traces of her son in her accent, her face, her strong handshake.

Helen took the bag without giving Arthur a chance to protest and marched off, clearly expecting them to follow.

They did and Eames leaned close to whisper, “I’m glad you’re here.”

\- - -

That first day, they stopped by Eames’s apartment to drop off Arthur’s bag and then set off to explore the city, Eames wearing a brightly patterned scarf that he claimed was based of the Fourth Doctor’s. Eames dragged him to a little Mexican place and they ate tacos and drank agua fresca, even as the day outside was bright and bitingly cold.

Eames chattered about everything, giving a steady commentary about sites and sounds and places they passed, telling Arthur stories from his life in flashes of information about people Arthur didn’t know. It was a bizarre reprise of that first meeting, an annotated list of things that Eames loved about New York, now that he lived here and wasn’t just seeing it on television.

Arthur felt like he didn’t say much, if only because he was content to listen to what Eames said, like the best soundtrack imaginable.

Eventually the conversation shifted, sitting on a bench near FAO Schwartz, the ridiculously elaborate Christmas decorations not yet taken down from the previous day.

“I would try to justify consequentialism to you, but unfortunately it is just false,” Eames said.

Arthur laughed, “Since when have you had the slightest problem with sophistry?”

Eames rolled his eyes. “I _don’t_ have a problem with sophistry. I have a problem with stupidity – all the justifications for util never actually explain why the fuck it is normative. Say what you will about Kant – and I do – but at least the blighter attempted to explain why there was a moral injunction.”

“I don’t know,” Arthur said, leaning back into the wind. “I think it makes sense to say that all policy makers understand is util. Deont is so difficult, you know? Also, I hear that brain scans prove.”

Eames actually hit him, an open-handed nudge to Arthur’s forehead. “If you don’t take that back, I will leave you here and let you figure out the subway system by your ownself.”

Arthur punched him in the arm. “That’s what an iphone is for, dickhead.”

“Ahh, is this the level of discourse to which you descend when there isn’t a judge watching?” Eames said, his tone arch. “I’d give you a 27.5”

Arthur hit him again, as he deserved, and Eames laughed.

“But seriously –“ Arthur said, “It should be possible to prove that morality should have something to do with human happiness.”

Eames lit his cigarette and shrugged – an expressive, almost Gallic gesture, if it weren’t for his ridiculous scarf. “I don’t know. I think the problem is that the util-folk try to aggregate happiness, try to make it like a math problem – add one laughing baby to one perfect day, minus a sinus infection, equals four utils.”

He took another drag, opened his eyes and looked at Arthur, more seriously than the moment deserved. “It seems like it should be singular, you know? One moment can’t really be compared to another like that.”

Arthur’s breath caught in his chest and he felt the hair on the back of his neck bristle with no conception if it were due to the chill in the air or Eames, the blue of his eyes—

Eames suddenly cursed and checked his phone. He stood up, throwing his cigarette underneath his boots.

“We gotta go—mum is expecting us for dinner.”

\- - -

The food was good – warm, plentiful, hearty. Eames was uncommonly quiet, pushing his roast chicken around on his plate and watching it as if _it_ could provide an unbeatable reason why policy makers should maximize the most good for the most number of people.

Helen chattered away, friendly and easy, and Arthur put on his best socializing-with-the-parents manners, talking about how he had applied to Columbia and Brown and University of Chicago, suppressing his surprise when she exclaimed that Chicago was Eames’s first choice, too.

Every once in a while she would glance over at Eames, a small furrow in her brow, but when asked a direct question, Eames would respond and he even made a joke or two – it wasn’t sulking, not precisely, and he wasn’t being sullen. He just seemed restless, even in his stillness, and Arthur tried not to worry.

Arthur didn’t ask about Eames’s father, even though he was curious – there were no photos of any older men in the neat, clean living room, and one of the pictures was cropped oddly, like someone had been cut out of it.

When dinner was finished, Helen stood up and got the plates, shooing them off.

“Do you want to see my room?” Eames said. “You’ll be sleeping on the floor of it – there’s an air mattress, so it won’t suck as badly as it might, and if it does you can have my –“

“Yeah, that’d be great,” Arthur said, cutting him off and Eames laughed as if at himself.

“Okay, yeah,” Eames said and they moved to a small room off the living room. It was messy in the same halfhearted way that all teenage boys rooms were messy and there were books everywhere, stacked into towering piles, overflowing the shelves and teetering on Eames’s bedside table. There were posters of different science fiction shows, the Joker asking why he was so serious, and a crazy eyed photograph of Gilles Deleuze. Arthur’s carry on was perched in the corner.

Eames watched him examine the books, Arthur running his fingers over names that he recognized from debate cases or policy backfiles if at all.

“It took me a while to learn to read properly,” Eames said suddenly, into the silence. “So I went a little mad when I got the trick of it – I still read slowly and I have to read the difficult parts out loud, an annoying debate habit, but I don’t have much better to do.”

It would have sounded lonely, but Arthur figured there wasn’t much that was better to do than read this sort of thing, figured it probably helped Eames’s native brilliance in debate rounds. He didn’t want to pity Eames or anything, but he couldn’t help but marvel a little bit – he’d seen the fucker try to write a debate case, he couldn’t imagine reading _Anti-Oedipus_.

“It’s awesome,” Arthur said, sincerely, and saw Eames relax a little, even if he was still fidgeting. “I got you something.”

Arthur went to his suitcase and fished out a book and a shirt, handing them over. Now it was his turn to fidget nervously.

“If the shirt doesn’t fit, I have the receipt – and if you already have the book, I can take it back, it looks super interesting—“ but Eames was running his fingers over the sky blue material of the dress shirt in something like awe, shifting his attention to the copy of the unabridged _History of Madness_ with the same sort of reverence.

“They’re lovely,” he said, holding up the shirt in one hand as the book was propped open in the other, as if he couldn’t decide which he wanted to focus on more. “Seriously, perfect—here, I got you a gift too.”

Eames stuck his presents under his arm as if he couldn’t bare to set them down and opened the drawer of his end table, taking out a tie, a couple of DVDs, and a folded sheet of paper. He handed them over and then immediately looked awkward.

“I remember you saying that you hadn’t seen _Bonnie and Clyde_, so I got that for you, because everyone should see it – and I figured you also hadn’t seen _Butch Cassidy_ and everyone should see _that_, too, so. Yeah.”

He paused, cleared his throat. “And I drew you something.”

It was a painting, actually, not a drawing – done in thick, dark washes of water color, blue giving a quiet sense of darkness to the scene, dancing up against the two figures seating against each other in the lower right. Arthur’s face was illuminated by a computer, done in brilliant and exceptional detail, whereas a figure that must have been Eames leaned against him in deep shadow. It was that night, at camp, where Arthur had seen dawn come up to the sound of Eames’s theory arguments.

Arthur stared at it, the lovely tie and the two movies forgotten as he tried to memorize every detail.

He bit his lip and Eames started to sound a little panicked.

“If you don’t like it, you don’t have to –“

“No!” Arthur said, looking up and feeling himself flush. “It’s perfect.”

“Uh,” Eames said, blushing right back at him. “Okay. “

There was a moment of supreme, indescribable awkwardness and then Arthur carefully folded the painting back up, putting it safely between the pages of the book he had stashed to read on the plane.

“So,” Arthur said. “Want to watch a movie?”

And they did, Arthur witnessing Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty’s doomed love with Eames warm and solid beside him, the laptop propped open on the end of Eames’s bed and the two of them curled up against the headboard.

When that was done, they watched the Pulp Fiction and fell asleep to the sounds of Samuel L. Jackson bitching about cleaning brains off of the backseat of a car.

\- - -

The second day, they woke up on top of the covers and awkward about it, Eames mumbling and pointing in response to Arthur asking about a shower.

By the time he had furtively jerked off, biting his lips to keep the sounds in his throat, the little apartment already smelled like eggs and bacon. He emerged to find Eames bickering with this mother about nothing in particular, a bowl of cereal in front of him as if an appetizer to the grease.

“Have you ever been to the Empire State Building, Arthur?” Helen asked.

“Mum! That’s touristy shit.”

“Language,” she said, absently.

“No?” Arthur said, looking at Eames uncertainly.

“See? You must take him. It’s obscene for an American to have never seen their own famous places.”

“It’s okay—“

“I won’t hear of it. You should be allowed to do touristy _shit_ as my son so eloquently put it, even if he considers himself too cool.”

Eames rolled his eyes and drank the last bit of milk out of his cereal.

Helen put a plate of eggs, bacon, and beans at an empty spot at the table. “Do you drink coffee?”

“Er. No thanks?” Arthur.

“Arthur only drinks coffee medicinally, when he doesn’t have time to sleep,” Eames said. “But I’ll take some, thanks.”

“Get your own,” Helen said, easily. “You aren’t a guest.”

Eames rolled his eyes and Arthur fell into his food gratefully, swatting Eames’s hand away as he tried to steal a rasher of bacon. Once Eames got his own plate of food and Helen sat down to join them with hers, breakfast settled into an easy quiet comfort.

Once they had finished and Eames had taken his own shower, the two of them tumbled out into the world for another day of exploring.

\- - -

“Locke is a prick,” Eames said. He had a bit of mustard on his nose. “He’s an asshole and the social contract makes no fucking sense.”

Arthur gestured broadly with his hotdog. “I make no claims to Locke’s intelligence. All I’m saying is that contractarianism doesn’t have to be relegated to novice – Gauthier is _awesome_ and Rawls fucking reinvented political theory.”

“Gauthier is just trendy right now,” Eames said. “Soon, people will remember that the social contract is not worth the paper it is not written on.”

“That joke would be funny if I don’t remember Saito making the _exact same one_ in his social contract module,” Arthur said. Eames shoved him, but not even hard enough to make Arthur spill his coke.

“I’m still hungry,” Eames said, into the comfortable sound of Arthur finishing his hotdog.

“You eat an absurd amount,” Arthur said. Eames waved off the complaint with a languorous hand.

“Growing boy and all that.”

“Yeah, and soon you’ll stop growing upward and just start growing outward.”

“Fat jokes are low,” Eames said, disapprovingly. “And they futher the kyriarchy – fat is a feminist issue, you know.”

“If I buy you second lunch, will you promise to never say the word ‘kyriarchy’ again?”

“Deal,” Eames said. “But I pick the place.”

\- - -

Eames took him to a pizza place and they got two dollar slices and ate them standing on top of a grate, huddled together in the humid warmth of the air. Arthur tried not to think about why it was warm and where the air was coming from – such thoughts only lead to bad things.

Instead, he watched Eames devour his pizza in large, almost desperate looking bites. He wasn’t particularly hungry – the two hot dogs, combined with the big breakfast from earlier made the food unnecessary at best – but he found an odd sort of pleasure in watching Eames eat.

It wasn’t like it was particularly attractive. His cheeks were red and his lips shiny with grease. He _still_ had mustard on his nose. But, at the same time, his eyes were heavy lidded with pleasure and when he polished off his second slice, he put his fingers in his mouth to suck them clean.

Arthur bit back a yelp, but whatever stifled sound came out caught Eames’s attention and he noticed Arthur looking at him.

“What?”

And suddenly, Arthur couldn’t help himself. He dropped his half-eaten slice and stepped in toward Eames, Eames’s eyes going wide and almost-alarmed. There was a breath where he could maybe have still backed out, could maybe have wiped the mustard off of Eames’s face and passed the movement off as friendly courtesy. Eames stood frozen, unwilling to help him, and then Arthur tilted his head up and placed a dry, shy kiss on Eames’s lips.

He felt the intake of breath that Eames took and sympathized with it’s shocky rush – his heart was beating staccato and he backed up, ready with apologizes and excuses and a half-formed joke about undermining heteronormativity. And then Eames clutched at him, pulled him close and kissed him properly.

Eames’s lips were chapped and his breath stank of garlic and cheese and his hands were almost painful where they grabbed at his jacket, digging into his skin.

At the same time, though, it was sublime – he kissed Eames, opened his mouth and let him in, sought out the taste of him from underneath the grease and cheese. He pressed up against him in something like desperation, and they kissed for a long perfect moment on a subway grate, on the street in front of a pizzeria, in the middle of New York City.

Finally, finally Eames pulled away. Arthur wanted to chase his lips, continue that kiss, but the look on his face was worth watching too.

There was a moment where they just looked at each other before Eames beamed and ruffled Arthur’s hair.

“Years of dancing around and it is me eating _pizza_ that finally gets you?”

Arthur couldn’t even bring himself to blush or feel embarrassed. He just grinned like a fool back.

“Yeah, well, the whole fucking charade just demonstrates I have extremely strange taste in men.”

Eames leaned in to kiss him again and Arthur allowed it for another perfect few moments before pulling back himself.

“I believe you owe me a trip to the Empire State Building,” he said and Eames took his hand and led him there.

\- - -

(I want it to be known that I love you people.)

For the rest of the day, Eames was touching Arthur. His hand was on Arthur’s arm, on the small of Arthur’s back, ruffling Arthur’s hair and then running his fingers through it to smooth it back down. He touched Arthur’s cheek and his elbow and once, very lightly, Arthur’s bottom lip.

Part of Arthur was embarrassed and wanted to shy away, but the rest of him squirmed deliciously at the attention, leaned into Eames’s hand. Even, a time or two, moved closer to Eames’s body, pressed their shoulders together on the subway.

Eames threw his arm around and they missed the subway stop to visit Columbia and ended up in Harlem.

“You shouldn’t have distracted me,” Eames said, scolding but still sounding delighted, still smiling fit to burst.

“You are the one that is supposed to live here,” Arthur said.

“I do live here, but you were distracting me!”

They walked as if they wanted to be holding hands, but even in this newness Arthur didn’t think he could handle that. They passed a bakery with a black/red/green flag and an Ethiopian restaurant, wandered around with nowhere to go and nowhere to be but here.

“All I wanted to do was check out a campus of a school I wanted to go to and you get us lost.”

Eames laughed. “A) We are not lost. I know precisely where we are. B)It is still your fault. C)Don’t act like it was a big favor allowing me to avoid the Empire State Building, I know full well you hate being a tourist.”

Arthur bumped his shoulder, let their hands brush. “Stop subpointing, you sound like a debater.”

“Well-organized delivery of arguments makes sign-posting infinitely easier,” Eames said, prim and in a terrible American accent.

Arthur snorted. “Was that supposed to sound like me? Because I’m actually from further _north_ than here, not Georgia.”

“Is this better? Is it, dare I say, wicked good?”

It was much better, actually, but Arthur refused to acknowledge that and simply tilted his head slightly in the air.

“I may be from Massachusetts, but I have never said wicked anything in my life, wot wot.”

Eames shoved him. “You are slaughtering the Queen’s. Bloody Americans.”

Arthur shoved him back and Eames stumbled over himself, grinning and flushed from cold, his hair kicked up and crazy by the wind, his nose bright red and lips chapped. Arthur couldn’t find anything to say and just watched him.

Eames flushed brighter (no longer from the winter) and looked down.

“Uh, want to go home for dinner?” he said. He sounded strangled and Arthur couldn’t help but smile to himself.

“Yeah, let’s.”

\- - -

Dinner was incredibly uncomfortable. Arthur had not been expecting that. Since lunch, the day had been unsettled, but in all the best ways, assumptions and previous patterns shifting and falling into new and exciting places.

This was just excruciating, in an entirely expected way. Arthur kept his head down and replayed the last hour, picking at his green beans.

The subway stop before the one they had previously gotten off, Eames had stood up and dragged Arthur with him, pulling him out onto the platform.

Arthur was laughing – out of confusion if nothing else – and was already making some sort of joke about Eames being confused again when Eames pushed him against a pillar in the dank underground and kissed him.

He responded, because he couldn’t possibly do otherwise, but pulled back after a moment or two.

“Wha—“

“My mum is all I have,” Eames said. His eyes were serious. “I don’t know how she’d react, but—“

He cut himself off and leaned forward to kiss Arthur again, missing a little and pecking him on the fold of his lips.

“She’s it, for me.”

It took Arthur a moment or two to even realize what Eames was talking about and he could feel his own brow furrow. Eames reached up and cupped his forehead as if to smooth the skin.

“Do you think she’d be upset?”

Eames shrugged with one shoulder. “Maybe. Probably? I don’t know. It’s a risk I’m not willing to take.”

Arthur feel silent, Eames’s body a steady warmth against him. People passed them, some looking at them with amusement, some rolling their eyes, some with far more uncomfortable reactions. Arthur was suddenly hyper aware of every speck of attention.

“These people don’t bother you?”

Eames snorted. “I’m not _ashamed_. It’s just unnecessary.”

Eames looked as if this were perfectly, completely reasonable and Arthur couldn’t find a way to explain his discomfort. He nodded.

“I understand,” Arthur said and Eames kissed him again, gentle and sweet.

“Okay,” Eames said. They got back on the subway.

Now it was dinner, and Eames and his mum were chatting away like they had yesterday, cheerful and bickering as ever. Arthur felt like every moment was being scrutinized, but he wasn’t sure by whom – Eames was behaving as naturally as if it _were_ yesterday, as if nothing at all had happened. It was oddly magnificent how thoroughly _normal_ Eames seemed – completely different than he had been not an hour ago and yet precisely the same.

Arthur wasn’t quite that caliber an actor, but he got through it, managing to keep up his end of the conversation in something like deftness. At this rate, Helen would just think he was boring, if she thought anything at all of him.

After Eames had polished off seconds (Arthur managing to tease him for his appetite, ignoring the way the words caught in his throat), he casually suggested they go catch a film.

Arthur agreed and they left the apartment once more, sat in the back of a movie theatre and ignored explosions happening as they made out.

Arthur was confused, but he couldn’t bring himself to argue.

\- - -

After the movie they took refuge in a coffee shop, the night bitter cold.

Eames bought him tea with exaggerated gallantry and suggested the corner booth, leaned up against him and pressed his cold nose into Arthur’s neck.

Arthur hit him and then wondered if that counted as domestic abuse. Eames just laughed and stole a sip of Arthur’s tea.

He made a face. “This herbal shit is disgusting.”

“Yeah, well, caffeine is less efficient when you’re an addict.”

“It’s not purely medicinal, Arthur. Some of us actually like the stuff,” Eames said.

“I just see no reason to waste its efficacy when I find myself needing it on occasion,” Arthur said.

“Yeah, well, remind me to get you an oil change.” Eames said it with a laugh, but Arthur stiffened ever so slightly.

“What?” Eames said.

“I’m not a robot,” Arthur said. Eames pinched his side, taking a bit of skin between his fingers.

“I do know that.” His voice was mild.

“I mean – it’s not a big deal, and I really _liked_ that drawing, but. I’m not a robot,” he said. He felt like an idiot, wished he could be articulate about this sort of thing in the same precise way he could differentiate classical realism from neorealism.

Eames smiled at him, his entire face soft and fond. This just made Arthur more uncomfortable.

“I _know_. I like how serious you get about debate. It’s impressive to watch and it works for you. And to be fair, it’s probably a sight more honest then the rest of us, with all our performances of nonchalance.”

Arthur seized the opportunity to change the conversation, unwilling to sit through another moment of this. “You never fooled me – I know you love the trophies.”

“I do,” Eames agreed, easily. “I hate losing, particularly since the lot of them are wankers. Present company excluded, of course.”

“You are among the few that doesn’t think I’m an asshole,” Arthur said. He didn’t really mean to say it, but apparently he had lost control of his voice as well as his hand, which Eames had appropriated in one of his own.

“When I met you, you were very explicit about when I annoyed you,” Eames said. He sounded nostalgic. “I like that – I know where I stand. And by now, shit – you’re _my_ asshole. You’re obnoxious tends to be on the side of good.”

“I like how you assume you are on the light side of the force,” Arthur said, and shifted the conversation to Star Wars. Eames willingly took up the baton and they spent the next hour in a futile attempt to make midichlorians work perfectly with canon.

Before they got on the subway, Eames kissed him breathless and then they went home. Arthur slept on the air mattress.


End file.
